LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


ANDREW  JACKSON,  by  W.  G.  BROWN 
JAMES  B.  EADS,  by  Louis  How 
BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN,  by  PAUL  E.  MORK 
PETER  COOPER,  by  R.  W.  RAYMOND 
THOMAS  JEFFERSON,  by  H.  C.  MKRWIN 
WILLIAM  PENN,  by  GEORGE  HODGES 
GENERAL  GRANT.    (In preparation) 
LEWIS  AND  CLARK,  by  WILLIAM  R.  LIGH- 
TON  .    ( In  preparation) 

Each  about  100  pages,  i6mo,  with  photogravure 
portrait,  75  cents ;  School  Edition^  50  cents, 
net 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


iDe  Biographical  Aeries 

NUMBER  6 

WILLIAM  PENN 

BY 

GEORGE  HODGES 


WILLIAM  PENN 


BY 


GEORGE  HODGES 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

Boston:  4  Park  Street ;  New  York:  11  East  Seventeenth  Street 
Chicago:  378-388  Wabash  Avenue 

press,  CambtiD0e 


H 


COPYRIGHT,  1901,  BY  GEORGE   HODGES 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  A  PURITAN  BOYHOOD  :  WANSTEAD  CHURCH 

AND  CHIGWELL  SCHOOL  .        .        .  1 

II.  AT  OXFORD  :  INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE        8 

III.  IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  :    THE  WORLD 

AND  THE  OTHER  WORLD         ...      22 

IV.  PENN  BECOMES  A  QUAKER:  PERSECUTION 

AND  CONTROVERSY 33 

V.  THE    BEGINNING    OF    PENN'S    POLITICAL 

LIFE  :  THE   HOLY  EXPERIMENT      .        .      58 
VI.  THE     SETTLEMENT    OF     PENNSYLVANIA: 

PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  THE  PROVINCE        68 
VII.  AT  THE  COURT   OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND, 

AND  "IN  RETIREMENT"  ....      93 
VIII.  PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  TO  THE  PROVINCE  : 

CLOSING  YEARS 113 


227632 


WILLIAM  PENN 


A  PURITAN  BOYHOOD:   WANSTEAD  CHURCH 

AND    CHIGWELL    SCHOOL 

THE  mother  of  William  Penn  came  from 
Rotterdam,  in  Holland.  She  was  the  daugh- 
ter of  John  Jasper,  a  merchant  of  that  city. 
The  lively  Mr.  Pepys,  who  met  her  in  1664, 
when  William  was  twenty  years  of  age, 
describes  her  as  a  "  fat,  short,  old  Dutch- 
woman," and  says  that  she  was  "mighty 
homely."  He  records  a  tattling  neighbor's 
gossip  that  she  was  not  a  good  housekeeper. 
He  credits  her,  however,  with  having  more 
wit  and  discretion  than  her  husband,  and 
liked  her  better  as  his  acquaintance  with 
her  progressed.  That  she  was  of  a  cheerful 
disposition  is  evidenced  by  many  passages 


2  WILLIAM  PENN 

of  Pepys's  Diary.  That  is  all  we  know  about 
her. 

William's  father  was  an  ambitious,  suc- 
cessful, and  important  person.  He  was 
twenty-two  years  old,  and  already  a  captain 
in  the  navy,  when  he  married  Margaret 
Jasper.  The  year  after  his  marriage  he  was 
made  rear-admiral  of  Ireland ;  two  years 
after  that,  admiral  of  the  Straits ;  in  four 
years  more,  vice-admiral  of  England ;  and 
the  next  year,  a  "general  of  the  sea"  in 
the  Dutch  war.  This  was  in  Cromwell's 
time,  when  the  naval  strength  of  England 
was  being  mightily  increased.  A  young  man 
of  energy  and  ability,  acquainted  with  the 
sea,  was  easily  in  the  line  of  promotion. 

The  family  was  ancient  and  respectable. 
Penn's  father,  however,  began  life  with  little 
money  or  education,  and  few  social  advan- 
tages. Lord  Clarendon  observed  of  him  that 
he  "  had  a  great  mind  to  appear  better  bred, 
and  to  speak  like  a  gentleman,"  implying 
that  he  found  some  difficulty  in  so  doing. 
Clarendon  said,  also,  that  he  "had  many 
good  words  which  he  used  at  adventure." 


A  PURITAN  BOYHOOD  3 

The  Penns  lived  on  Tower  Hill,  in  the 
Parish  of  St.  Catherine's,  in  a  court  adjoin- 
ing London  Wall.  There  they  resided  in 
"two  chambers,  one  above  another,"  and 
fared  frugally.  There  William  was  born 
on  the  14th  of  October,  1644. 

Marston  Moor  was  fought  in  that  year, 
and  all  England  was  taking  sides  in  the  con- 
tention between  the  Parliament  and  the 
king.  The  navy  was  in  sympathy  with  the 
Parliament ;  and  the  young  officer,  though 
his  personal  inclinations  were  towards  the 
king,  went  with  his  associates.  But  in 
1654  he  appears  to  have  lost  faith  in  the 
Commonwealth.  Cromwell  sent  an  expedi- 
tion to  seize  the  Spanish  West  Indies.  He 
put  Penn  in  charge  of  the  fleet,  and  made 
Venables  general  of  the  army.  The  two 
commanders,  without  conference  one  with 
the  other,  sent  secret  word  to  Charles  II., 
then  in  exile  on  the  Continent,  and  offered 
him  their  ships  and  soldiers.  This  transac- 
tion, though  it  seemed  for  the  moment  to  be 
of  none  effect,  resulted  years  afterward  in 
the  erection  of  the  Colony  of  Pennsylvania. 


4  WILLIAM  PENN 

Charles  declined  the  offer ;  "  he  wished  them 
to  reserve  their  affections  for  his  Majesty 
till  a  more  proper  season  to  discover  them ; " 
but  he  never  forgot  it.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  a  friendship  between  the  House  of 
Stuart  and  the  family  of  Penn,  which  Wil- 
liam Penn  inherited. 

The  expedition  captured  Jamaica,  and 
made  it  a  British  colony ;  but  in  its  other 
undertakings  it  failed  miserably ;  and  the 
admiral,  on  his  return,  was  dismissed  from 
the  navy  and  committed  to  the  Tower. 

About  that  same  time,  the  admiral's 
young  son,  being  then  in  the  twelfth  year 
of  his  age,  beheld  a  vision.  His  mother  had 
removed  with  him  to  the  village  of  Wan- 
stead,  in  Essex.  Here,  as  he  was  alone  in 
his  chamber,  "he  was  suddenly  surprised 
with  an  inward  comfort,  and,  as  he  thought, 
an  external  glory  in  his  room,  which  gave 
rise  to  religious  emotions,  during  which  he 
had  the  strongest  conviction  of  the  being  of 
a  God,  and  that  the  soul  of  man  was  capa- 
ble of  enjoying  communication  with  him. 
He  believed,  also,  that  the  seal  of  Divinity 


WANSTEAD  CHURCH  5 

had  been  put  upon  him  at  this  moment,  or 
that  he  had  been  awakened  or  called  upon 
to  a  holy  life." 

While  William  Penn  the  elder  had  been 
going  from  promotion  to  promotion,  sailing 
the  high  seas,  and  fighting  battles  with  the 
enemies  of  England,  William  Penn  the 
younger  had  been  living  with  all  possible 
quietness  in  the  green  country,  saying  his 
prayers  in  Wan  stead  Church,  and  learning 
his  lessons  in  Chigwell  School. 

Wanstead  Church  was  devotedly  Puri- 
tan. The  chief  citizens  had  signed  a  protest 
against  any  "  Popish  innovations,"  and  had 
agreed  to  punish  every  offender  against  "  the 
true  reformed  Protestant  religion." 

The  founder  of  Chigwell  School  had  pre- 
scribed in  his  deed  of  gift  that  the  master 
should  be  "a  good  Poet,  of  a  sound  reli- 
gion, neither  Papal  nor  Puritan ;  of  a  good 
behaviour ;  of  a  sober  and  honest  conversa- 
tion ;  no  tippler  nor  haunter  of  alehouses, 
no  puffer  of  tobacco ;  and,  above  all,  apt  to 
teach  and  severe  in  his  government."  Here 
William  studied  Lilly's  Latin  and  Cleonard's 


6  WILLIAM  PENN 

Greek  Grammar,  together  with  "cypher- 
ing and  casting-up  accounts,"  being  a  good 
scholar,  we  may  guess,  in  the  classics,  but 
encountering  the  master's^  "  severe  govern- 
ment "  in  his  sums.  Chigwell  was  as  Puri- 
tan a  place  as  Wanstead.  About  the  time  of 
William's  going  thither,  the  vicar  had  been 
ejected  on  petition  from  the  parishioners, 
who  complained  that  he  had  an  altar  before 
which  he  bowed  and  cringed,  and  which  he 
had  been  known  to  kiss  "  twice  in  one  day." 

It  is  plain  that  religion  made  up  a  large, 
interesting,  and  important  part  of  life  in 
these  villages  in  which  William  Penn  was 
getting  his  first  impressions  of  the  world. 
All  about  were  great  forests,  whose  shadows 
invited  him  to  seclusion  and  meditation.  All 
the  news  was  of  great  battles,  most  of  them 
fought  in  a  religious  cause,  which  even  a 
lad  could  appreciate,  and  towards  which  he 
would  readily  take  an  attitude  of  stout  par- 
tisanship. The  boy  was  deeply  affected  by 
these  surroundings.  "  I  was  bred  a  Protest- 
ant," he  said  long  afterwards,  "  and  that 
strictly,  too."  Trained  as  he  was  in  Puritan 


CHIGWELL  SCHOOL  7 

habits  of  introspection,  lie  listened  for  the 
voice  of  God,  and  heard  it.  Thus  the  tone 
of  his  life  was  set.  There  were  moments  in 
his  youth  when  "  the  world,"  as  the  phrase 
is,  attracted  him;  there  were  times  in  his 
great  career  when  he  seemed,  and  perhaps 
was,  disobedient  to  this  heavenly  vision ; 
but,  looking  back  from  the  end  of  his  life  to 
this  beginning,  "  as  a  tale  that  is  told,"  it  is 
seen  to  be  lived  throughout  in  the  light  of 
the  glory  which  shone  in  his  room  at  Wan- 
stead.  William  Penn  from  that  hour  was 
a  markedly  religious  man.  Thereafter,  no- 
thing was  so  manifest  or  eminent  about  him 
as  his  religion. 


II 

AT  OXFORD  :    INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE 

ON  the  22d  of  April,  1661,  we  get  an- 
other glimpse  of  William. 

Mr  Pepys,  having  risen  early  on  the 
morning  of  that  day,  and  put  on  his  velvet 
coat,  and  made  himself,  as  he  says,  as  fine 
as  he  could,  repaired  to  Mr.  Young's,  the 
flag-maker,  in  Cornhill,  to  view  the  proces- 
sion wherein  the  king  should  ride  through 
London.  There  he  found  "  Sir  W.  Pen  and 
his  son,  with  several  others."  "  We  had  a 
good  room  to  ourselves,"  he  says,  "with 
wine  and  good  cake,  and  saw  the  show  very 
well."  The  streets  were  new  graveled,  and 
the  fronts  of  the  houses  hung  with  carpets, 
with  ladies  looking  out  of  all  the  windows ; 
and  "  so  glorious  was  the  show  with  gold 
and  silver,  that  we  were  not  able  to  look  at 
it,  our  eyes  at  last  being  so  overcome." 

This  was  a  glory  very  different  from  that 


AT  OXFORD  9 

which  the  lad  had  seen,  five  or  six  years  be- 
fore, in  his  room.  The  world  was  here  pre- 
senting its  attractions  in  competition  with 
the  u  other  world "  of  the  earlier  vision. 
The  contrast  is  a  symbol  of  the  contention 
between  the  two  ideals,  into  which  William 
was  immediately  to  enter. 

The  king  and  the  Duke  of  York  had 
looked  up  as  they  passed  the  flag-maker's, 
and  had  recognized  the  admiral.  He  had 
gone  to  Ireland,  upon  his  release  from  the 
Tower,  and  had  there  resided  in  retirement 
upon  an  estate  which  his  father  had  owned 
before  him.  Thence  returning,  as  the  Resto- 
ration became  more  and  more  a  probability, 
he  had  secured  a  seat  in  Parliament,  and 
had  been  a  bearer  of  the  welcome  message 
which  had  finally  brought  Charles  from  his 
exile  in  Holland  to  his  throne  in  England. 
For  his  part  in  this  pleasant  errand,  he  had 
been  knighted  and  made  Commissioner  of 
Admiralty  and  Governor  of  Kinsale.  Thus 
his  ambitions  were  being  happily  attained. 
He  had  retrieved  and  improved  his  fortunes, 
and  had  become  an  associate  with  persons 
of  rank  and  a  favorite  with  royalty. 


10  WILLIAM  PENN 

He  had  immediately  sent  his  son  to  Ox- 
ford. William  had  been  entered  as  a  gen- 
tleman-commoner of  Christ  Church,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Michaelmas  term  of  1660. 
It  was  clearly  the  paternal  intention  that 
the  boy  should  become  a  successful  man  of 
the  world  and  courtier,  like  his  father. 

Sir  William,  however,  had  not  reflected 
that  while  he  had  been  pursuing  his  career 
of  calculating  ambition  and  seeking  the 
pleasure  of  princes,  his  son  had  been  living 
amongst  Puritans  in  a  Puritan  neighbor- 
hood. Young  Penn  went  up  to  Oxford  to 
find  all  things  in  confusion.  The  Puritans 
had  been  put  out  of  their  places,  and  the 
Churchmen  were  entering  in.  It  is  likely  that 
this,  of  itself,  displeased  the  new  student, 
whose  sympathies  were  with  the  dispossessed. 
The  Churchmen,  moreover,  brought  their 
cavalier  habits  with  them.  In  the  reaction 
from  the  severity  which  they  had  just  es- 
caped, they  did  many  objectionable  things, 
not  only  for  the  pleasure  of  doing  them,  but 
for  the  added  joy  of  shocking  their  Puritan 
neighbors.  They  amused  themselves  freely 


INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE         11 

on  the  Lord's  day ;  they  patronized  games 
and  plays;  and  they  tippled  and  "puffed 
tobacco,"  and  swore  and  swaggered  in  all 
the  newest  fashions.  William  was  the  son 
of  his  father  in  appreciation  of  pleasant 
and  abundant  living.  But  he  was  not  of  a 
disposition  to  enter  into  this  wanton  and 
audacious  merry-making,  —  a  gentle,  serious 
country  lad,  with  a  Puritan  conscience. 

Moreover,  at  this  moment,  in  the  face 
of  any  possible  temptation,  William's  sober 
tastes  and  devout  resolutions  were  strength- 
ened by  certain  appealing  sermons.  Here 
it  was  at  Oxford,  the  nursery  of  enthusiasms 
and  holy  causes,  that  he  received  the  im- 
pulse which  determined  all  his  after  life. 
He  spent  but  a  scant  two  years  in  college ; 
and  the  work  of  the  lecture  rooms  must 
have  suffered  seriously  during  that  time 
from  the  contention  and  confusion  of  the 
changes  then  in  progress ;  so  that  academ- 
ically the  college  could  not  have  greatly 
profited  him.  The  profit  came  in  the  influ- 
ence of  Thomas  Loe.  Loe  was  a  Quaker. 

The  origin  of  the  name  "  Quaker  "  is  un- 


12  WILLIAM  PENN 

certain.  It  is  derived  by  some  from  the  fact 
that  the  early  preachers  of  the  sect  trembled 
as  they  spoke ;  others  deduce  it  from  the 
trembling  which  their  speech  compelled  in 
those  who  heard  it.  By  either  derivation,  it 
indicates  the  earnest  spirit  of  that  strange 
people  who,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  were 
annoying  and  displeasing  all  their  neighbors. 
George  Fox,  the  first  Quaker,  was  a  cob- 
bler ;  and  the  first  Quaker  dress  was  the 
leather  coat  and  breeches  which  he  made  for 
himself  with  his  own  tools.  Thereafter  he  was 
independent  both  of  fashions  and  of  tailors. 
Cobbler  though  he  was,  and  so  slenderly 
educated  that  he  did  not  express  himself 
grammatically,  Fox  was  nevertheless  a  pro- 
phet, according  to  the  order  of  Amos,  the 
herdman  of  Tekoa.  He  looked  out  into  the 
England  of  his  day  with  the  keenest  eyes  of 
any  man  of  the  times,  and  remarked  upon 
what  he  saw  with  the  most  honest  and  candid 
speech.  A  man  of  the  plain  people,  like 
most  of  the  prophets  and  apostles,  the  of- 
fenses which  chiefly  attracted  his  attention 
were  such  as  the  plain  people  naturally  see. 


INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE        13 

Out  of  the  windows  of  his  cobbler's  shop, 
Fox  beheld  with  righteous  indignation  the 
extravagant  and  insincere  courtesies  of  the 
gentlefolk,  and  heard  their  exaggerated 
phrases  of  compliment.  In  protest  against 
the  unmeaning  courtesies,  he  wore  his  hat  in 
the  presence  of  no  matter  whom,  taking  it  off 
only  in  time  of  prayer.  In  protest  against 
the  unmeaning  compliments,  he  addressed 
no  man  by  any  artificial  title,  calling  all  his 
neighbors,  without  distinction  of  persons, 
by  their  Christian  names ;  and  for  the  plural 
pronoun  "you,"  the  plural  of  dignity  and 
flattery,  he  substituted  "thee"  and  "thou." 

The  same  literalness  appeared  in  his  selec- 
tion of  "  Swear  not  at  all "  as  one  of  the 
cardinal  commandments,  and  in  his  applica- 
tion of  it  to  the  oaths  of  the  court  and  of 
the  state.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  has  in 
all  ages  been  considered  difficult  to  enact  in 
common  life,  but  it  would  have  been  hard 
to  find  any  sentence  in  it  which  in  the  days 
of  Fox  and  Penn,  with  their  interpretation, 
would  have  brought  upon  a  conscientious 
person  a  heavier  burden  of  inconvenience. 


14  WILLIAM  PENN 

Not  only  did  it  make  the  Quakers  guilty  of 
contempt  of  court  and  thus  initially  at  fault 
in  all  legal  business,  but  it  exposed  them  to  a 
natural  suspicion  of  disloyalty  to  the  govern- 
ment. It  was  a  tune  of  political  change,  first 
the  Commonwealth,  then  Charles,  then  James, 
then  William;  and  every  change  signified 
the  supremacy  of  a  new  idea  in  religion, 
Puritan,  Anglican,  Roman  Catholic,  and  Pro- 
testant. Every  new  ruler  demanded  a  new 
oath  of  allegiance ;  and  as  plots  and  conspir- 
acies were  multiplied,  the  oath  was  required 
again  and  again ;  so  that  England  was  like 
an  unruly  school,  whose  master  is  continually 
calling  upon  the  pupils  to  declare  whether  or 
no  they  are  guilty  of  this  or  that  offense. 
*~  The  Quakers  were  forbidden  by  their  doctrine 
of  the  oath  to  make  answer  in  the  form  which 
the  state  required.  And  they  suffered  for 
this  scruple  as  men  have  suffered  for  the 
maintenance  of  eternal  principles. 

To  the  social  eccentricity  of  the  irremove- 
able  hat  and  the  singular  pronoun,  and  to  the 
civil  eccentricity  of  the  refused  oath,  George 
Fox  and  his  disciples  added  a  series  of  pro- 


INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE        15 

tests  against  the  most  venerable  customs 
of  Christianity.  They  did  away  with  all  the 
forms  and  ceremonies  of  Churchman  and 
of  Puritan  alike.  Not  even  baptism,  not 
even  the  Lord's  Supper  remained.  Their 
service  was  a  silent  meeting,  whose  solemn 
stillness  was  broken,  if  at  all,  by  the  voice 
of  one  who  was  sensibly  "moved"  by  the 
Spirit  of  God.  They  discarded  all  orders  of 
the  ministry.  They  refused  alike  all  creeds 
and  all  confessions. 

Not  content  with  thus  abandoning  most 
that  their  contemporaries  valued  among  the 
institutions  of  religion,  the  Quakers  made 
themselves  obtrusively  obnoxious.  They 
argued  and  exhorted,  in  season  and  out 
of  season;  they  printed  endless  pages  of 
eager  and  violent  controversy;  they  went 
into  churches  and  interrupted  services  and 
sermons. 

Amongst  these  various  denials  there  were 
two  positive  assertions.  One  was  the  doctrine 
of  the  return  to  primitive  Christianity ;  the 
other  was  the  doctrine  of  the  inward  light. 
Let  us  get  back,  they  said,  to  those  blessed 


16  WILLIAM  PENN 

centuries  when  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles 
was  remembered,  and  the  fellowship  of  the 
Apostles  was  faithfully  kept,  —  when  Justin 
Martyr  and  Irenseus  and  Ignatius  and  the 
other  holy  fathers  lived.  And  let  us  listen 
to  the  inner  voice ;  let  us  live  in  the  illumina- 
tion of  the  light  which  light eth  every  man, 
and  attend  to  the  counsels  of  that  Holy 
Spirit  whose  ministrations  did  not  cease  with 
the  departure  of  the  last  Apostle.  God,  they 
believed,  spoke  to  them  directly,  and  told 
them  what  to  do. 

George  Fox,  in  1656,  had  brought  this 
teaching  to  Oxford ;  and  among  the  company 
of  Quakers  which  had  thus  been  gathered 
under  the  eaves  of  the  university,  Thomas  Loe 
had  become  a  "  public  Friend,"  or,  as  would 
commonly  be  said,  a  minister.  When  Wil- 
liam Penn  entered  Christ  Church  College, 
Loe  was  probably  in  the  town  jail.  It  is 
at  least  certain  that  he  was  imprisoned  there, 
with  forty  other  Quakers,  sometime  in  1660. 

To  Loe's  preaching  many  of  the  students 
listened  with  attention.  It  is  easy  to  see  how 
his  doctrines  would  appeal  to  young  manhood. 


INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE         17 

The  fact  that  they  were  forbidden  would  at- 
tract some,  and  that  the  man  who  preached 
thus  had  suffered  for  his  faith  would  attract 
others.  Their  emphasis  upon  entire  sincerity 
and  consistency  in  word  and  deed  would 
commend  them  to  honest  souls,  while  the 
exaltation  of  the  inward  light  would  move 
then,  as  in  all  ages,  the  idealists,  the  poets, 
the  enthusiasts  among  them.  William  Penn 
knew  what  the  inward  light  was.  He  had 
seen  it  shining  so  that  it  filled  all  the  room 
where  he  was  sitting.  Accordingly,  he  not 
only  went  to  hear  Loe  speak  but  was  pro- 
foundly impressed  by  what  he  heard. 

If  Penn  was  naturally  a  religious  per- 
son, —  by  inheritance,  perhaps,  from  his 
mother,  —  he  was  also  naturally  of  a  politi- 
cal mind,  by  inheritance  from  his  father. 
What  Loe  said  touched  both  sides  of  this 
inheritance.  For  the  Quakers  had  already 
begun  to  dream  of  a  colony  across  the  sea. 
The  Churchmen  had  such  a  colony  in  Vir- 
ginia ;  the  Puritans  had  one  in  Massa- 
chusetts ;  somewhere  else  in  that  untilled 
continent  there  must  be  a  place  for  those 


18  WILLIAM  PENN 

who  in  England  could  expect  no  peace 
from  either  Puritan  or  Churchman.  Not 
only  had  they  planned  to  have  sometime  a 
country  of  their  own,  but  they  had  already 
located  it.  They  had  chosen  the  lands  which 
lay  behind  the  Jerseys.  While  Loe  was 
preaching  and  Penn  was  listening,  Fox 
was  writing  to  Josiah  Cole,  a  Quaker  who 
was  then  in  America,  asking  him  to  confer 
with  the  chiefs  of  the  Susquehanna  Indians. 
This  plan  Loe  revealed  to  his  student  con- 
gregation. It  appealed  to  Penn.  He  had  an 
instinctive  appreciation  of  large  ideas,  and 
an  imagination  and  confidence  which  made 
him  eager  to  undertake  their  execution.  It 
was  in  his  blood.  It  was  the  spirit  which 
had  carried  his  father  from  a  lieutenancy 
in  the  navy  to  the  position  of  an  honored 
and  influential  member  of  the  court.  "I 
had  an  opening  of  joy  as  to  these  parts,"  he 
says,  meaning  Pennsylvania,  "in  1661,  at 
Oxford." 

This  meeting  with  Loe  was  therefore  a 
crisis  in  Penn's  life.  William  Penn  will 
always  be  remembered  as  a  leader  among 


INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE         19 

the  early  Quakers,  and  as  the  founder  of  a 
commonwealth.  He  first  became  acquainted 
with  the  Quakers,  and  first  conceived  the 
idea  of  founding  at  Oxford,  or  assisting  to 
found,  a  commonwealth,  by  the  preaching  of 
Thomas  Loe. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  spirit  of  pro- 
test will  often  pass  by  serious  offenses  and 
fasten  upon  some  apparently  slight  occasion 
which  has  rather  a  symbolical  than  an  ac- 
tual importance.  William  Penn,  so  far  as 
we  know,  endured  the  disorders  of  anti- 
Puritan  Oxford  without  protest.  He  entered 
so  far  into  the  life  of  the  place  as  to  con- 
tribute, with  other  students,  to  a  series  of 
Latin  elegies  upon  the  death  of  the  Duke 
of  Gloucester ;  and  he  "  delighted,"  An- 
thony Wood  tells  us,  "  in  manly  sports  at 
times  of  recreation."  It  is  true  that  he  may 
have  written  to  his  father  to  take  him  away, 
for  Mr.  Pepys  ^records  in  his  journal,  under 
date  of  Jan.  25,  1662,  «  Sir  W.  Pen  came 
to  me,  and  did  break  a  business  to  me 
about  removing  his  son  from  Oxford  to 
Cambridge,  to  some  private  college."  But 


20  WILLIAM  PENN 

nothing  came  of  it.  William  is  said,  indeed, 
to  have  absented  himself  rather  often  from 
the  college  prayers,  and  to  have  joined  with 
other  students  whom  the  Quaker  preaching 
had  affected  in  holding  prayer-meetings  in 
their  own  rooms.  But  all  went  fairly  well 
until  an  order  was  issued  requiring  the  stu- 
dents, according  to  the  ancient  custom,  to 
wear  surplices  in  chapel.  Then  the  young 
Puritan  arose,  and  assisted  in  a  ritual  re- 
bellion. He  and  his  friends  "  fell  upon  those 
students  who  appeared  in  surplices,  and  he 
and  they  together  tore  them  everywhere 
over  their  heads."  Not  content  with  thus 
seizing  and  rending  the  obnoxious  vestments, 
they  proceeded  further  to  thrust  the  white 
gowns  into  the  nearest  cesspool,  into  whose 
depths  they  poked  them  with  long  sticks. 

This  incident  ended  William's  course  at 
college.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he  was  ex- 
pelled or  only  suspended.  He  was  dismissed, 
and  never  returned.  Eight  years  after, 
chancing  to  pass  through  Oxford,  and  learn- 
ing that  Quaker  students  were  still  sub- 
jected to  the  rigors  of  academic  discipline, 


INFLUENCE  OF  THOMAS  LOE         21 

he  wrote  a  letter  to  the  vice-chancellor.  It 
probably  expresses  the  sentiments  with  which 
as  an  undergraduate  he  had  regarded  the 
university  authorities  :  "  Shall  the  multi- 
plied oppressions  which  thou  continuest  to 
heap  upon  innocent  English  people  for  their 
religion  pass  unregarded  by  the  Eternal 
God  ?  Dost  thou  think  to  escape  his  fierce 
wrath  and  dreadful  vengeance  for  thy  un- 
godly and  illegal  persecution  of  his  poor 
children  ?  I  tell  thee,  no.  Better  were  it 
for  thee  thou  hadst  never  been  born."  And 
so  on,  in  the  controversial  dialect  of  the 
time,  calling  the  vice-chancellor  a  "poor 
mushroom,"  and  abusing  him  generally. 
Elsewhere,  in  a  retrospect  which  I  shall 
presently  quote  at  length,  he  refers  to  his 
university  experiences :  "  Of  my  persecu- 
tion at  Oxford,  and  how  the  Lord  sustained 
me  in  the  midst  of  that  hellish  darkness 
and  debauchery ;  of  my  being  banished  the 
college." 


Ill 

IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  :   THE  WORLD  AND 
THE   OTHER   WORLD 

IN  his  retrospect  of  his  early  life,  Penn 
notes  what  immediately  followed  his  depar- 
ture from  the  university :  "  The  bitter  usage 
I  underwent  when  I  returned  to  my  father,  — 
whipping,  beating,  and  turning  out  of  doors 
in  1662." 

The  admiral  was  thoroughly  angry.  He 
was  at  best  but  imperfectly  acquainted  with 
his  son,  of  whom  in  his  busy  life  he  had 
seen  but  little,  and  was  therefore  unpre- 
pared for  such  extraordinary  conduct.  He 
was  by  no  means  a  religious  person.  For 
the  spiritual,  or  even  the  ecclesiastical,  as- 
pects of  the  matter,  he  cared  nothing.  But 
he  had,  as  Clarendon  perceived,  a  strong 
desire  to  be  well  thought  of  by  those  who 
composed  the  good  society  of  the  day.  He 


IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  23 

expected  the  members  of  his  family  to 
deport  themselves  as  befitted  such  society. 
And  here  was  William,  whom  he  had  care- 
fully sent  to  a  college  where  he  would  natu- 
rally consort  with  the  sons  of  titled  families, 
taking  up  with  a  religious  movement  which 
would  bring  him  into  the  company  of  cob- 
blers and  tinkers.  It  is  said,  indeed,  that 
Robert  Spencer,  afterwards  Earl  of  Sunder- 
land,  helped  William  destroy  the  surplices. 
But  this  is  denied ;  and  even  if  it  were 
true,  it  would  be  plain,  from  Spencer's  after 
career,  that  he  did  it  not  for  the  principle, 
but  for  the  fun  of  the  thing.  William  was 
in  the  most  sober  earnest.  Accordingly,  the 
admiral  turned  his  son  out  of  doors. 

The  boy  came  back,  of  course.  Beating 
and  turning  out  of  doors  were  not  such  seri- 
ous events  in  the  seventeeenth  century  as 
they  would  be  at  present.  Most  men  said 
more,  and  in  louder  voices,  and  meant  less. 
It  was  but  a  brief  quarrel,  and  father  and 
son  made  it  up  as  best  they  could.  It  was 
plain,  however,  that  something  must  be  done. 
Whipping  would  not  avail.  William's  head 


24  WILLIAM  PENN 

was  full  of  queer  notions,  upon  which  a 
stick  had  no  -effect.  His  father  bethought 
himself  of  the  pleasant  diversions  of  France. 
The  lad,  he  said,  has  lived  in  the  country 
all  his  days,  and  has  had  no  acquaintance 
with  the  merry  world ;  he  shall  go  abroad, 
that  he  may  see  life,  and  learn  to  behave 
like  a  geniileman ;  let  us  see  if  this  will  not 
cure  him  of  his  pious  follies. 

Accordingly,  to  France  the  young  man 
went,  and  traveled  in  company  with  certain 
persons  of  rank.  He  stayed  more  than  a 
year,  and  enjoyed  himself  greatly.  He  was 
at  the  age  when  all  the  world  is  new  and 
interesting ;  and  being  of  attractive  appear- 
ance and  high  spirits,  with  plenty  of  money, 
the  world  gave  him  a  cordial  welcome.  So 
far  did  he  venture  into  the  customs  of  the 
country,  that  he  had  a  fight  one  night  in 
a  Paris  street  with  somebody  who  crossed 
swords  with  him,  and  disarmed  his  antago- 
nist. He  had  a  right,  according  to  the  rules, 
to  kill  him,  but  he  declined  to  do  so.  When 
he  came  home,  he  pleased  his  father  much 
by  his  graceful  behavior  and  elegant  attire. 


IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  25 

"  This  day,"  says  Mr.  Pepys  in  his  diary  for 
August  26,  1664,  "my  wife  tells  me  that 
Mr.  Pen,  Sir  William's  son,  is  come  back 
from  France,  and  came  to  visit  her.  A 
most  modish  person  grown,  she  says,  a  fine 
gentleman."  Pepys  thinks  that  he  is  even 
a  bit  too  French  in  his  manner  and  con- 
versation. 

"  I  remember  your  honour  very  well," 
writes  a  correspondent  years  after,  "  when 
you  came  newly  out  of  France,  and  wore 
pantaloon  breeches." 

This  journey  affected  Penn  all  the  rest  of 
his  life.  It  restrained  him  from  following 
the  absurder  singularities  of  his  associates. 
George  Fox's  leather  suit  he  would  have 
found  impossible.  He  wore  his  hat  in  the 
Quaker  way,  and  said  "  thee  "  and  "  thou," 
but  otherwise  he  appears  to  have  dressed 
and  acted  according  to  the  conventions  of 
polite  society.  He  did,  indeed,  become  a 
Quaker;  but  there  were  always  Quakers 
who  looked  askance  at  him  because  he  was 
so  different  from  them,  able  to  speak  French 
and  acquainted  with  the  manners  of  draw- 
ing-rooms. 


26  WILLIAM  PENN 

In  two  respects,  however,  his  visit  to 
France  differed  from  that  of  some  of  his 
companions  in  travel.  There  were  places  to 
which  they  went  without  him ;  and  there 
were  places  to  which  he  went  without  them. 
He  kept  himself  from  the  grosser  tempta- 
tions of  the  country.  "You  have  been  as 
bad  as  other  folks,"  said  Sir  John  Robinson 
when  Penn  was  on  trial  for  preaching  in  the 
street. 

"When,"  cried  Penn,  "and  where?  I 
charge  thee  tell  the  company  to  my  face." 

"  Abroad,"  said  Robinson,  "  and  at  home, 
too." 

"  I  make  this  bold  challenge,"  answered 
Penn,  "to  all  men,  women  and  children 
upon  earth,  justly  to  accuse  me  with  ever 
having  seen  me  drunk,  heard  me  swear, 
utter  a  curse,  or  speak  one  obscene  word 
(much  less  that  I  ever  made  it  my  prac- 
tice). I  speak  this  to  God's  glory,  that  has 
ever  preserved  me  from  the  power  of  those 
pollutions,  and  that  from  a  child  begot  an 
hatred  in  me  towards  them." 

He  went  away  alone  for  some  months  to 


IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  27 

the  Protestant  college  of  Saumur,  where  he 
devoted  himself  to  a  study  of  that  primitive 
Christianity  in  which,  as  Loe  had  told  him, 
was  to  be  found  the  true  ideal  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  Here  he  acquired  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  writings  of  the  early 
Fathers,  from  whom  he  liked  to  quote. 

Thus  he  returned  to  England  in  1664, 
attired  in  French  pantaloon  breeches,  and 
with  little  French  affectations  in  his  man- 
ner, but  without  vices,  and  with  a  smatter- 
ing of  patristic  learning.  He  was  sent  by 
his  father  to  study  law  at  Lincoln's  Inn. 
He  was  to  be  a  courtier,  and  in  that  posi- 
tion it  would  be  both  becoming  and  con- 
venient to  have  some  knowledge  of  the  law. 
Thus  he  settled  down  among  the  lawyers, 
and  it  seemed  for  the  moment  as  if  his 
father  had  succeeded  in  his  purpose.  It 
seemed  as  if  the  world  had  effectually  ob- 
scured the  other  world. 

There  are  two  letters,  written  about  this 
time  from  William  to  his  father,  which  show 
a  pleasant  mixture  of  piety  with  a  lively  in- 
terest in  the  life  about  him.  He  has  been 


28  WILLIAM  PENN 

at  sea  for  a  few  days  with  the  admiral,  and 
returns  with  dispatches  to  the  king.  "  I 
bless  God,"  he  writes,  "  my  heart  does  not 
in  any  way  fail,  but  firmly  believe  that  if 
God  has  called  you  out  to  battle,  he  will 
cover  your  head  in  that  smoky  day."  He 
hastened  on  his  errand,  he  says,  to  White- 
hall, and  arrived  before  the  king  was  up ;  but 
his  Majesty,  learning  that  there  was  news, 
"  earnestly  skipping  out  of  bed,  came  only 
in  his  gown  and  slippers ;  who,  when  he 
saw  me,  said,  *  Oh !  is 't  you  ?  How  is  Sir 
William?'" 

That  was  in  May.  Within  a  week  the 
plague  came.  On  the  7th  of  June,  1665, 
Mr.  Pepys  makes  this  ominous  entry: 
"This  day,"  he  says,  "much  against  my 
will,  I  did  in  Drury  Lane  see  two  or  three 
houses  marked  with  a  red  cross  upon  the 
doors,  and '  Lord,  have  mercy,'  written  there  ; 
which  was  a  sad  sight  to  me,  being  the  first 
of  the  kind  that,  to  my  remembrance,  I 
ever  saw."  Day  by  day  the  pestilence  in- 
creased, and  presently  there  was  no  more 
studying  at  Lincoln's  Inn.  Young  Penn 


IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  29 

went  for  safety  into  the  clean  country. 
There,  among  the  green  fields,  in  the  en- 
forced leisure,  with  time  to  think,  and  the 
most  sobering  things  to  think  about,  his  old 
seriousness  returned.  The  change  was  so 
marked  that  his  father,  feeling  that  it  were 
well  to  renew  the  pleasant  friendship  with 
the  world  which  had  begun  in  France,  sent 
him  over  to  Ireland. 

At  Dublin,  the  Duke  of  Ormond,  the 
Lord  Lieutenant,  was  keeping  a  merry 
court.  William  entered  heartily  into  its 
pleasures.  He  resided  upon  his  father's  es- 
tates, at  Shannagarry  Castle.  He  so  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  the  suppression  of  a 
mutiny  that  Ormond  offered  him  a  com- 
mission in  the  army,  and  William  was  dis- 
posed to  accept  it.  He  had  his  portrait 
painted,  clad  in  steel,  with  lace  at  his  throat. 
His  dark  hair  is  parted  in  the  middle,  and 
hangs  in  cavalier  fashion  over  his  shoulders. 
He  looks  out  of  large,  clear,  questioning 
eyes ;  and  his  handsome  face  is  strong  and 
serious. 

But  the  young  cavalier  went  one  day  to 


30  WILLIAM  PENN 

Cork  upon  some  business,  and  there  heard 
that  Thomas  Loe  was  in  town,  and  that  he 
was  to  preach.  Penn  went  to  hear  him,  and 
again  the  spoken  word  was  critical  and  de- 
cisive. "  There  is  a  faith,"  said  the  preacher, 
"which  overcomes  the  world,  and  there  is 
a  faith  which  is  overcome  by  the  world." 
Such  was  the  theme,  and  it  seemed  to  Penn 
as  if  every  word  were  spoken  out  of  heaven 
straight  to  his  own  soul.  In  the  long  con- 
tention which  had  been  going  on  within  him 
between  the  world  and  the  other  world, 
the  world  had  been  getting  the  mastery. 
The  attractions  of  a  martial  life  had  shone 
more  brightly  than  the  light  which  had  flamed 
about  him  in  his  boyhood.  Then  Loe  spoke, 
and  thenceforth  there  was  no  more  perplexity. 
Penn's  choice  was  definitely  made. 

In  his  account  of  his  travels  in  Holland 
and  Germany,  written  some  ten  years  after 
this  crisis,  Penn  recurs  to  it  in  an  address 
from  which  I  have  already  quoted.  He  was 
speaking  in  Wiemart,  at  a  meeting  in  the 
mansion-house  of  the  Somerdykes,  and  was 
illustrating  his  exhortations  from  his  own 


IN  FRANCE  AND  IRELAND  31 

experience.  He  passed  in  rapid  review  the 
incidents  of  his  early  life  which  we  have  re- 
counted. "  Here  I  began  to  let  them  know," 
he  says,  "  how  and  where  the  Lord  first  ap- 
peared unto  me,  which  was  about  the  twelfth 
year  of  my  age,  in  1656 ;  how  at  times,  betwixt 
that  and  the  fifteenth,  the  Lord  visited  me, 
and  the  divine  impressions  he  gave  me  of 
himself."  Then  the  banishment  from  Oxford, 
and  his  father's  turning  him  out  of  doors. 
44  Of  the  Lord's  dealings  with  me  in  France, 
and  in  the  time  of  the  great  plague  in  Lon- 
don, in  fine,  the  deep  sense  he  gave  me  of 
the  vanity  of  this  world,  of  the  deep  irre- 
ligiousness  of  the  religions  of  it ;  then  of 
my  mournful  and  bitter  cries  to  him  that  he 
would  show  me  his  own  way  of  life  and  salva- 
tion, and  my  resolution  to  follow  him,  what- 
ever reproaches  or  sufferings  should  attend 
me,  and  that  with  great  reverence  and  ten- 
derness of  spirit ;  how,  after  all  this,  the  glory 
of  the  world  overtook  me,  and  I  was  even 
ready  to  give  myself  up  unto  it,  seeing  as  yet 
no  such  thing  as  the  'primitive  spirit  and 
church '  upon  earth,  and  being  ready  to  faint 


32  WILLIAM  PENN 

concerning  my '  hope  of  the  restitution  of  all 
things.'  It  was  at  this  time  that  the  Lord 
visited  me  with  a  certain  sound  and  testimony 
of  his  eternal  word,  through  one  of  them  the 
world  calls  Quakers,  namely,  Thomas  Loe." 
Struggling,  as  Penn  was,  against  contin- 
ual temptations  to  abandon  his  high  ideal, 
getting  no  help  from  his  parents,  who  were 
displeased  at  him,  nor  from  the  clergy,  whose 
"  invectiveness  and  cruelty  "  he  remembers, 
nor  from  his  companions,  who  made  them- 
selves strange  to  him;  bearing  meanwhile 
"  that  great  cross  of  resisting  and  watching 
against  mine  own  inward  vain  affections 
and  thoughts,"  the  only  voice  of  help  and 
strength  was  that  of  Thomas  Loe.  Seeking 
for  the  "primitive  spirit  and  church  upon 
earth,"  he  found  it  in  the  sect  which  Loe 
represented.  His  mind  was  now  resolved. 
He,  too,  would  be  a  Quaker. 


IV 

PENN   BECOMES   A   QUAKER:   PERSECUTION 
AND    CONTROVERSY 

WILLIAM  now  began  to  attend  Quaker 
meetings,  though  he  was  still  dressed  in  the 
gay  fashions  which  he  had  learned  in  France. 
His  sincerity  was  soon  tested.  A  proclama- 
tion made  against  Fifth  Monarchy  men  was 
so  enforced  as  to  affect  Quakers.  A  meeting 
at  which  Penn  was  present  was  broken  in 
upon  by  constables,  backed  with  soldiers,  who 
"rudely  and  arbitrarily"  required  every 
man's  appearance  before  the  mayor.  Among 
others,  they  "  violently  haled  "  Penn.  From 
jail  he  wrote  to  the  Earl  of  Orrery,  Lord 
President  of  Munster,  making  a  stout  protest. 
It  was  his  first  public  utterance.  "  Diversities 
of  faith  and  conduct,"  he  argued,  "  contribute 
not  to  the  disturbance  of  any  place,  where 
moral  conformity  is  barely  requisite  to  pre- 
serve the  peace."  He  reminded  his  lordship 


34  WILLIAM  PENN 

that  he  himself  had  not  long  since  "  concluded 
no  way  so  effectual  to  improve  or  advantage 
this  country  as  to  dispense  with  freedom 
[i.  e.  to  act  freely]  in  all  things  pertaining 
to  conscience." 

Penn  wrote  so  much  during  his  long  life 
that  his  selected  works  make  five  large  vol- 
umes. Many  of  these  pages  are  devoted  to 
the  statement  of  Quaker  theology ;  some  are 
occupied  with  descriptions  of  his  colonial  pos- 
sessions ;  some  are  given  to  counsels  and  con- 
clusions drawn  from  experience  and  dealing 
with  human  life  in  general ;  but  there  is  one 
idea  which  continually  recurs,  —  sometimes 
made  the  subject  of  a  thesis,  sometimes  enter- 
ing by  the  way,  —  and  that  is  the  popular 
.  right  of  liberty  of  conscience.  It  was  for  this 
that  he  worked,  and  chiefly  lived,  most  of  his 
life.  Here  it  is  set  forth  with  all  clearness 
in  the  first  public  word  which  he  wrote. 

William's  letter  opened  the  jail  doors. 
It  is  likely,  however,  that  the  signature  was 
more  influential  than  the  epistle ;  for  his 
Quaker  associates  seem  not  to  have  come 
out  with  him.  The  fact  which  probably 


PENN  BECOMES  A  QUAKER  35 

weighed  most  with  the  Lord  President  was 
that  Perm  was  the  son  of  his  father  the 
admiral,  and  the  protege  of  Ormond.  His 
father  called  him  home.  It  was  on  the  3d 
of  September  that  William  was  arrested; 
on  the  29th  of  December,  being  the  Lord's 
day,  Mrs.  Turner  calls  upon  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Pepys  for  an  evening  of  cheerful  conversa- 
tion, "and  there,  among  other  talk,  she 
tells  me  that  Mr.  William  Pen,  who  has 
lately  come  over  from  Ireland,  is  a  Quaker 
again,  or  some  very  melancholy  thing ;  that 
he  cares  for  no  company,  nor  comes  into 
any." 

Admiral  Penn  was  sorely  disappointed. 
Neither  France  nor  Ireland  had  availed  to 
wean  his  son  from  his  religious  eccentrici- 
ties. Into  the  pleasant  society  where  his 
father  had  hoped  to  see  him  shine,  he  de- 
clined to  enter.  He  said  "  thee  "  and  "  thou," 
and  wore  his  hat.  Especially  upon  these 
points  of  manners,  the  young  man  and  his 
father  held  long  discussions.  The  admiral 
insisted  that  William  should  refrain  from 
making  himself  socially  ridiculous;  though 


36  WILLIAM  PENN 

even  here  he  was  willing  to  make  a  reasonable 
compromise.  "  You  may  '  thee '  and  6  thou ' 
whom  you  please,"  he  said,  "except  the 
king,  the  Duke  of  York,  and  myself."  But 
the  young  convert  declined  to  make  any 
exceptions. 

Thereupon,  for  the  second  time,  the  ad- 
miral thrust  his  son  out  of  the  house.  The 
Quakers  received  him.  He  was  thenceforth 
accounted  among  them  as  a  teacher,  a 
leader :  in  their  phrase,  a  "  public  Friend." 
This  was  in  1668,  when  he  was  twenty-four 
years  old. 

The  work  of  a  Quaker  minister,  at  that 
time,  was  made  interesting  and  difficult  not 
only  by  the  social  and  ecclesiastical  preju- 
dices against  which  he  must  go,  but  by  cer- 
tain laws  which  limited  free  speech  and  free 
action.  The  young  preacher  speedily  made 
himself  obnoxious  to  both  these  kinds  of 
laws.  Of  the  three  years  which  followed, 
he  spent  more  than  a  third  of  the  time  in 
prison,  being  once  confined  for  saying,  and 
twice  for  doing,  what  the  laws  forbade. 

The  religious  world  was  filled  with  con- 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    37 

troversy.  There  were  discussions  in  the 
meeting-houses ;  and  a  constant  stream  of 
pamphlets  came  from  the  press,  part  argu- 
ment and  part  abuse.  Even  mild-man- 
nered men  called  each  other  names.  The 
Quakers  found  it  necessary  to  join  in  this 
rough  give-and-take,  and  Penn  entered  at 
once  into  this  vigorous  exercise.  He  began 
a  long  series  of  like  documents  with  a  tract 
entitled  "  Truth  Exalted."  The  intent  of  it 
was  to  show  that  Roman  Catholics,  Church- 
men, and  Puritans  alike  were  all  shamefully 
in  error,  wandering  in  the  blackness  of 
darkness,  given  over  to  idle  superstition, 
and  being  of  a  character  to  correspond  with 
their  fond  beliefs ;  meanwhile,  the  Quakers 
were  the  only  people  then  resident  in  Chris- 
tendom whose  creed  was  absolutely  true  and 
their  lives  consistent  with  it. 

"  Come,"  he  says,  "  answer  me  first,  you 
Papists,  where  did  the  Scriptures  enjoin 
baby-baptism,  churching  of  women,  marry- 
ing by  priests,  holy  water  to  frighten  the 
devil?  Come  now,  you  that  are  called  Pro- 
testants, and  first  those  who  are  called  Epis- 


38  WILLIAM  PENN 

copalians,  where  do  the  Scriptures  own  such 
persecutors,  false  prophets,  tithemongers, 
deniers  of  revelations,  opposers  of  perfec- 
tion, men-pleasers,  time-servers,  unprofitable 
teachers?"  The  Separatists  are  similarly 
cudgeled :  they  are  "  groveling  in  beggarly 
elements,  imitations,  and  shadows  of  heav- 
enly things." 

*  Presently,  a  Presbyterian  minister  named 
Vincent  attacked  Quakerism.  Joseph  Besse, 
Penn's  earliest  biographer,  says  that  Vin- 
cent was  "  transported  with  fiery  zeal ;  " 
which,  as  he  remarks  in  parenthesis,  is  "  a 
thing  fertile  of  ill  language."  Penn  chal- 
lenged him  to  a  public  debate;  and,  this 
not  giving  the  Quaker  champion  an  oppor- 
tunity to  say  all  that  was  in  his  mind,  he 
wrote  a  pamphlet,  called  "  The  Sandy  Foun- 
dation Shaken."  The  full  title  was  much 
longer  than  this,  in  the  manner  of  the 
time,  and  announced  the  author's  purpose 
to  refute  three  "  generally  believed  and  ap- 
plauded doctrines :  first,  of  one  God,  subsist- 
ing in  three  distinct  and  separate  persons ; 
second,  of  the  impossibility  of  divine  pardon 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    39 

without  the  making  of  a  complete  satisfac- 
tion;  and  third,  of  the  justification  of  im- 
pure persons  by  an  imputed  righteousness." 
Penn's  handling  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  in  this  treatise  gave  much  offense. 
He  had  taken  the  position  of  his  fellow- 
religionists,  that  the  learning  of  the  schools 
was  a  hindrance  to  religion.  He  sought  to 
divest  the  great  statements  of  the  creed 
from  the  subtleties  of  mediaeval  philosophy. 
He  purposed  to  return  to  the  Scripture 
itself,  back  of  all  councils  and  formulas. 
Asserting,  accordingly,  the  being  and  unity 
of  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  he  so  re- 
fused all  the  conventional  phrases  of  the 
theologians  as  to  seem  to  them  to  reject  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  itself.  He  did  deny 
"  the  trinity  of  distinct  and  separate  persons 
in  the  unity  of  essence."  If  the  word  "  per- 
son "  has  one  meaning,  Penn  was  right ;  if 
it  has  another  meaning,  he  was  wrong.  If 
a  "  person  "  is  an  individual,  then  the  asser- 
tion is  that  there  are  three  Gods;  but  if 
the  word  signifies  a  distinction  in  the  divine 
nature,  then  the  unity  of  God  remains.  As 


40  WILLIAM  PENN 

so  often  happens  in  doctrinal  contention,  he 
and  his  critics  used  the  same  words  with 
different  definitions.  The  consequence  was 
that  the  bishop  of  London  had  him  put  in 
prison.  He  was  restrained  for  seven  months 
in  the  Tower. 

The  English  prison  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  a  place  of  disease  of  body  and 
misery  of  mind.  Penn  was  kept  in  close  con- 
finement, and  the  bishop  sent  him  word  that 
he  must  either  recant  or  die  a  prisoner.  "  I 
told  him,"  says  Penn,  "  that  the  Tower  was 
the  worst  argument  in  the  world  to  convince 
me ;  for  whoever  was  in  the  wrong,  those  who 
used  force  for  religion  could  never  be  hi  the 
right."  He  declared  that  his  prison  should 
be  his  grave  before  he  would  budge  a  jot. 
Thus  six  months  passed. 

But  the  situation  was  intolerable.  It  is 
sometimes  necessary  to  die  for  a  difference  of 
opinion,  but  it  is  not  advisable  to  do  so  for 
a  simple  misunderstanding.  Penn  and  the 
bishop  were  actually  in  accord.  The  young 
author  therefore  wrote  an  explanation  of  his 
book,  entitled  "Innocency  with  her  Open 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    41 

Face."  At  the  same  time  he  addressed  a  let- 
ter to  Lord  Arlington,  principal  secretary  of 
state.  In  the  letter  he  maintained  that  he 
had  "  subverted  no  faith,  obedience  or  good 
life,"  and  he  insisted  on  the  natural  right  of 
liberty  of  conscience  :  "  To  conceit,"  he  said, 
"  that  men  must  form  their  faith  of  things 
proper  to  another  world  by  the  prescriptions 
of  mortal  men,  or  else  they  can  have  no  right 
to  eat,  drink,  sleep,  walk,  trade,  or  be  at 
liberty  and  live  in  this,  to  me  seems  both 
ridiculous  and  dangerous."  These  writings 
gained  him  his  liberty.  The  Duke  of  York 
made  intercession  for  him  with  the  king. 

Penn  had  occupied  himself  while  in  prison 
with  the  composition  of  a  considerable  work, 
called  "  No  Cross,  No  Crown."  It  is  partly 
controversial,  setting  forth  the  reasons  for 
the  Quaker  faith  and  practice,  and  partly 
devotional,  exalting  self-sacrifice,  and  urging 
men  to  simpler  and  more  spiritual  living. 
Thus  the  months  of  his  imprisonment  had 
been  of  value  both  to  him  and  to  the  reli- 
gious movement  with  which  he  had  identified 
himself.  The  Quakers,  when  Penn  joined 


42  WILLIAM  PENN 

them,  had  no  adequate  literary  expression 
of  their  thought.  They  were  most  of  them 
intensely  earnest  but  uneducated  persons, 
who  spoke  great  truths  somewhat  incoher- 
ently. Penn  gave  Quaker  theology  a  sys- 
tematic and  dignified  statement. 

When  he  came  out  of  the  Tower,  he  went 
home  to  his  father.  The  admiral  had  now 
recovered  from  his  first  indignation.  Wil- 
liam was  still,  he  said,  a  cross  to  him,  but  he 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  endure  it.  Indeed, 
the  world  into  which  he  had  desired  his  son 
to  enter  was  not  at  that  moment  treating  the 
admiral  well.  He  was  suffering  impeachment 
and  the  gout  at  the  same  time.  He  saw  that 
William's  religion  was  giving  him  a  serenity 
in  the  midst  of  evil  fortune  which  he  him- 
self did  not  possess.  He  could  appreciate 
his  heroic  spirit.  He  admired  him  in  spite 
of  himself. 

William  then  spent  nearly  a  year  in 
Ireland,  administering  his  father's  estates. 
When  he  returned,  in  1670,  he  found  his 
Quaker  brethen  in  greater  trouble  than  be- 
fore. In  that  perilous  season  of  plots  and 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    43 

rumors  of  plots,  when  Protestants  lived  in 
dread  of  Roman  Catholics,  and  Churchmen 
knew  not  at  what  moment  the  Puritans  might 
again  repeat  the  tragedies  of  the  Common- 
wealth, neither  church  nor  state  dared  to  take 
risks.  The  reigns  of  Mary  and  of  Cromwell 
were  so  recent  an  experience,  the  Papists  and 
the  Presbyterians  were  so  many  and  so  hostile, 
that  it  seemed  unsafe  to  permit  the  assem- 
bling of  persons  concerning  whose  intentions 
there  could  be  any  doubt.  Any  company 
might  undertake  a  conspiracy.  The  result  of 
this  feeling  on  the  part  of  both  the  civil  and 
the  ecclesiastical  authorities  was  a  series  of 
ordinances,  reasonable  enough  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, and  perhaps  necessary,  but  which 
made  life  hard  for  such  stout  and  frank  dis- 
senters as  the  Quakers.  At  the  time  of 
Penn's  return  from  Ireland,  it  had  been  de- 
termined to  enforce  the  Conventicle  Act, 
which  prohibited  all  religious  meetings  except 
those  of  the  Church  of  England.  There  was, 
therefore,  a  general  arresting  of  these  suspi- 
cious friends  of  Penn's.  In  the  middle  of  the 
summer  Penn  himself  was  arrested. 


44  WILLIAM  PENN 

The  young  preacher  had  gone  to  a  meet- 
ing-house of  the  Quakers  in  Gracechurch  or 
Gracious  Street,  in  London,  and  had  found 
the  door  shut,  and  a  file  of  soldiers  barring 
the  way.  The  congregation  thereupon  held 
a  meeting  in  the  street,  keeping  their  custom- 
ary silence  until  some  one  should  be  moved 
to  speak.  It  was  not  long  before  the  spirit 
moved  Penn.  He  was  immediately  arrested, 
and  William  Mead,  a  linen  draper,  with  him, 
and  the  two  were  brought  before  the  mayor. 
The  charge  was  that  they  "  unlawfully  and 
tumultuously  did  assemble  and  congregate 
themselves  together  to  the  disturbance  of  the 
king's  peace  and  to  the  great  terror  and  dis- 
turbance of  many  of  his  liege  people  and  sub- 
jects." They  were  committed  as  rioters  and 
sent  to  await  trial  at  the  sign  of  the  Black 
Dog,  in  Newgate  Market. 

At  the  trial  Penn  entered  the  court-room 
wearing  his  hat.  A  constable  promptly 
pulled  it  off,  and  was  ordered  by  the  judge 
to  replace  it  in  order  that  he  might  fine  the 
Quaker  forty  marks  for  keeping  it  on.  Thus 
the  proceedings  appropriately  began.  Wil- 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    45 

liam  tried  in  vain  to  learn  the  terms  of  the 
law  under  which  he  was  arrested,  maintain- 
ing that  he  was  innocent  of  any  illegal  act. 
Finally,  after  an  absurd  and  unjust  hear- 
ing, the  jury,  who  appreciated  the  situation, 
brought  in  a  verdict  of  "  guilty  of  speaking 
in  Gracious  Street."  The  judges  refused  to 
accept  the  verdict,  and  kept  the  jury  without 
food  or  drink  for  two  days,  trying  to  make 
them  say,  "  guilty  of  speaking  in  Gracious 
Street  to  an  unlawful  assembly."  At  last 
the  jury  brought  in  a  formal  verdict  of  "  not 
guilty,"  which  the  court  was  compelled  to 
accept.  Thereupon  the  judges  fined  every 
juryman  forty  marks  for  contempt  of  court ; 
and  Penn  and  the  jurors,  refusing  to  pay 
their  fines,  were  all  imprisoned  in  Newgate. 
The  Court  of  Common  Pleas  presently  re- 
versed the  judges'  decision  and  released  the 
jury.  Penn  was  also  released,  against  his 
own  protest,  by  the  payment  of  his  fine  by 
his  father. 

The  admiral  was  in  his  last  sickness.  He 
was  weary,  he  said,  of  the  world.  It  had  not 
proved,  after  all,  to  be  a  satisfactory  world. 


46  WILLIAM  PENN 

He  did  not  grieve  now  that  his  son  had  re- 
nounced it.  At  the  same  time,  he  could  not 
help  but  feel  that  the  friendship  of  the  world 
was  a  valuable  possession ;  and  he  had  there- 
fore requested  his  patron,  the  Duke  of  York, 
to  be  his  son's  friend.  Both  the  duke  and 
the  king  had  promised  their  good  counsel 
and  protection.  Thus  "with  a  gentle  and 
even  gale,"  as  it  says  on  his  tombstone,  "  in 
much  peace,  [he]  arrived  and  anchored  in 
his  last  and  best  port,  at  Wanstead  in  the 
county  of  Essex,  the  16th  of  September, 
1670,  being  then  but  forty-nine  years  and 
four  months  old." 

The  admiral's  death  left  his  son  with  an 
annual  income  of  about  fifteen  hundred 
pounds.  This  wealth,  however,  made  no 
stay  in  his  Quaker  zeal.  Before  the  year 
was  ended,  he  was  again  in  prison. 

Sir  John  Robinson,  the  lieutenant  of  the 
Tower,  had  been  one  of  the  judges  in  the 
affair  of  Gracious  Street.  He  had  either 
taken  a  dislike  to  Penn,  or  else  was  deeply 
impressed  with  the  conviction  that  the  young 
Quaker  was  a  peril  to  the  state.  Finding 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    47 

that  there  was  to  be  a  meeting  in  Wheeler 
Street,  at  which  William  was  expected, 
he  sent  soldiers  and  had  him  arrested. 
They  conveyed  him  to  the  Tower,  where  he 
was  examined.  "  I  vow,  Mr.  Penn,"  said 
Sir  John,  "  I  am  sorry  for  you ;  you  are 
an  ingenious  gentleman,  all  the  world  must 
allow  you,  and  do  allow  you,  that ;  and  you 
have  a  plentiful  estate ;  why  should  you 
render  yourself  unhappy  by  associating  with 
such  a  simple  people  ?  "  That  was  the  sus- 
picious fact.  Men  in  Robinson's  position 
could  not  understand  why  Penn  should  join 
his  fortunes  with  those  of  people  so  different 
from  himself,  poor,  ignorant,  and  obscure, 
unless  there  were  some  hidden  motive.  He 
must  be  either  a  political  conspirator,  or, 
as  many  said,  a  Jesuit  in  disguise,  which 
amounted  to  the  same  thing.  "  You  do 
nothing,"  said  Sir  John,  "but  stir  up  the 
people  to  sedition."  He  required  him  to  take 
an  oath  "  that  it  is  not  lawful,  upon  any  pre- 
tense whatsoever,  to  take  arms  against  the 
king,  and  that  [he]  would  not  endeavour  any 
alteration  of  government  either  in  church 


48  WILLIAM  PENN 

or  state."  Penn  would  not  swear.  He  was 
therefore  sentenced  for  six  months  to  New- 
gate. "I  wish  you  wiser,"  said  Kobinson. 
"  And  I  wish  thee  better,"  retorted  Penn. 
"  Send  a  corporal,"  said  the  lieutenant, 
"  with  a  file  of  musqueteers  along  with 
him."  "  No,  no,"  broke  in  Penn,  "  send  thy 
lacquey  ;  I  know  the  way  to  Newgate." 

William  continued  in  prison  during  the 
entire  period  of  his  sentence,  at  first  in  a 
room  for  which  he  paid  the  jailers,  then,  by 
his  own  choice,  with  his  fellow  Quakers  in 
the  "common  stinking  jail."  Even  here, 
however,  he  managed,  as  before,  to  write ; 
and  he  must  have  had  access  to  books,  for 
what  he  wrote  could  not  have  been  com- 
posed without  sight  of  the  authors  from 
whom  he  quoted.  The  most  important  of 
his  writings  at  this  time  was  "  The  Great 
Case  of  Liberty  of  Conscience  once  more 
briefly  Debated  and  Defended  by  the  Au- 
thority of  Reason,  Scripture  and  Antiquity." 

Being  released  from  prison,  Penn  set 
out  for  the  Continent,  where  he  traveled 
in  Germany  and  Holland,  holding  meetings 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    49 

as  opportunity  offered,  and  regaining  such 
strength  of  body  as  he  may  have  lost  amidst 
the  rigors  of  confinement. 

In  1672,  being  now  back  in  England, 
and  having  reached  the  age  of  twenty- 
seven  years,  he  married  Gulielma  Maria 
Springett,  a  young  and  charming  Quakeress. 
Guli  Springett's  father  had  died  when  he 
was  but  twenty-three  years  old,  after  such 
valiant  service  on  the  Parliamentary  side 
in  the  civil  war  that  he  had  been  knighted 
by  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
Her  mother,  thus  bereft,  had  married  Isaac 
Pennington,  a  quiet  country  gentleman,  in 
whose  company,  after  some  search  for  satis- 
faction in  religion,  she  had  become  a  Quaker. 
Pennington's  Quakerism,  together  with  the 
sufferings  which  it  brought  upon  him,  had 
made  him  known  to  Penn.  It  was  to  him 
that  Penn  had  written,  three  years  before, 
to  describe  the  death  of  Thomas  Loe.  "  Tak- 
ing me  by  the  hand,"  said  William,  "he 
spoke  thus  :  *  Dear  heart,  bear  thy  cross, 
stand  faithful  for  God,  and  bear  thy  testi- 
mony in  thy  day  and  generation  ;  and  God 


50  WILLIAM  PENN 

will  give  thee  an  eternal  crown  of  glory,  that 
none  shall  ever  take  from  thee.  There  is 
not  another  way.  Bear  thy  cross.  Stand 
faithful  for  God.'  " 

It  was  in  Pennington's  house  that  Thomas 
Ell  wood  lived,  as  tutor  to  Guli  and  the 
other  children,  to  whom  one  day  in  1655 
had  come  his  friend  John  Milton,  bringing 
a  manuscript  for  him  to  read.  "  He  asked 
me  how  I  liked  it,  and  what  I  thought  of  it, 
which  I  modestly  but  freely  told  him ;  and 
after  some  further  discourse  about  it,  I 
pleasantly  said  to  him,  Thou  hast  said  much 
here  of  Paradise  Lost,  but  what  hast  thou 
to  say  about  Paradise  found  ?  "  Whereupon 
the  poet  wrote  his  second  epic. 

Ellwood  has  left  a  happy  description  of 
Guli  Springett.  "  She  was  in  all  respects," 
he  says,  "  a  very  desirable  woman,  —  whe- 
ther regard  was  had  to  her  outward  person, 
which  wanted  nothing  to  render  her  com- 
pletely comely  ;  or  as  to  the  endowments  of 
her  mind,  which  were  every  way  extraor- 
dinary." And  he  speaks  of  her  "  innocent, 
open,  free  conversation,"  and  of  the  "  abun- 


PERSECUTION  AND  CONTROVERSY    51 

dant  affability,  courtesy,  and  sweetness  of 
her  natural  temper."  Her  portrait  fits  with 
this  description,  showing  a  bright  face  in  a 
small,  dark  hood,  with  a  white  kerchief  over 
her  shoulders.  Both  her  ancestry  and  her 
breeding  would  dispose  her  to  appreciate 
heroism,  especially  such  as  was  shown  in 
the  cause  of  religion.  She  found  the  hero 
of  her  dreams  in  William  Penn.  Thus  at 
Amersham,  in  the  spring  of  1672,  the  two 
stood  up  in  some  quiet  company  of  Friends, 
and  with  prayer  and  joining  of  hands  were 
united  in  marriage. 

"  My  dear  wife,"  he  wrote  to  her  ten 
years  later,  as  he  set  out  for  America,  "  re- 
member thou  hast  the  love  of  my  youth,  and 
much  the  joy  of  my  life  ;  the  most  beloved, 
as  well  as  the  most  worthy  of  all  earthly 
comforts.  God  knows,  and  thou  knowest  it. 
I  can  say  it  was  a  match  of  Providence's 
making." 

The  Declaration  of  Indulgence,  the  king's 
suspension  of  the  penalties  legally  incurred 
by  dissent,  came  conveniently  at  this  time 
to  give  them  a  honeymoon  of  peace  and 


52  WILLIAM  PENN 

tranquillity.  They  took  up  their  residence 
at  Rickmansworth,  in  Hertfordshire.  In  the 
autumn,  William  set  out  again  upon  his 
missionary  journeys,  preaching  in  twenty- 
one  towns  in  twenty-one  days.  "  The  Lord 
sealed  up  our  labors  and  travels,"  he  wrote 
in  his  journal,  "  according  to  the  desire  of 
my  soul  and  spirit,  with  his  heavenly  re- 
freshments and  sweet  living  power  and  word 
of  life,  unto  the  reaching  of  all,  and  conso- 
lating  our  own  hearts  abundantly." 

So  he  returned  with  the  blessings  of  peace, 
"  which,"  as  he  said, ""  is  a  reward  beyond 
all  earthly  treasure." 


THE  BEGINNING  OF  PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE : 
THE   HOLY   EXPERIMENT 

IN  16 73,  George  Fox  came  back  from 
his  travels  in  America,  and  Penn  and  his 
wife  had  great  joy  in  welcoming  him  at 
Bristol.  No  sooner,  however,  had  Fox  ar- 
rived than  the  Declaration  of  Indulgence 
was  withdrawn.  It  had  met  with  much 
opposition :  partly  ecclesiastical,  from  those 
who  saw  in  it  a  scheme  to  reestablish  re- 
lations between  Rome  and  England ;  and 
partly  political,  from  those  who  found  but 
an  ill  precedent  in  a  royal  decree  which  set 
aside  parliamentary  legislation.  The  reli- 
gious liberty  which  it  gave  was  good,  but 
the  way  in  which  that  liberty  was  given  was 
bad.  What  was  needed  was  not  "indul- 
gence," but  common  justice.  So  the  king 
recalled  the  Declaration,  and  Parliament 


54  WILLIAM  PENN 

being  not  yet  ready  to  enact  its  provisions 
into  law,  the  prisons  were  again  filled  with 
peaceable  citizens  {whose  offense  was  their 
religion.  One  of  the  first  to  suffer  was  Fox, 
and  in  his  behalf  Penn  went  to  court.  He 
appealed  to  the  Duke  of  York. 

The  incident  is  significant  as  the  begin- 
ning of  another  phase  of  William's  life. 
Thus  far,  he  had  been  a  Quaker  preacher.- 
Though  he  was  unordained,  being  in  a  sect 
which  made  nothing  of  ordination,  he  was 
for  all  practical  purposes  a  minister  of  the 
gospel.  He  was  the  Rev.  William  Penn. < 
But  now,  when  he  opened  the  door  of  the 
duke's  palace,  he  entered  into  a  new  way  of 
living,  in  which  he  continued  during  most 
of  the  remainder  of  his  life.  He  began  to 
be  a  courtier ;  he  went  into  politics.  He 
was  still  a  Quaker,  preaching  sermons  and 
writing  books  of  theological  controversy ;  he 
gave  up  no  religious  conviction,  and  abated 
nothing  of  the  earnestness  of  his  personal 
piety;  but  he  had  found,  as  he  believed, 
another  and  more  effective  way  to  serve 
God.  He  now  began  to  enter  into  that  valu- 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  55 

able  but  perilous  heritage  which  had  been 
left  him  by  his  father,  the  friendship  of 
royalty. 

Penn  found  the  duke's  antechamber  filled 
with  suitors.  It  seemed  impossible  to  get 
into  the  august  presence.  But  Colonel  Ash- 
ton,  one  of  the  household,  looked  hard  at 
Penn,  and  found  in  him  an  old  companion, 
a  friend  of  the  days  when  William  was  still 
partaking  of  the  joys  of  pleasant  society. 
Ashton  immediately  got  him  an  interview, 
and  Penn  delivered  his  request  for  the 
release  of  Fox.  The  duke  received  him 
and  his  petition  cordially,  professing  himself 
opposed  to  persecution  for  religion's  sake, 
and  promising  to  use  his  influence  with  the 
king.  "  Then,"  says  Penn,  "  when  he  had 
done  upon  this  affair,  he  was  pleased  to  take 
a  very  particular  notice  of  me,  both  for  the 
relation  my  father  had  had  to  his  service 
in  the  navy,  and  the  care  he  had  promised 
to  show  in  my  regard  upon  all  occasions." 
He  expressed  surprise  that  William  had 
not  been  to  see  him  before,  and  said  that 
whenever  he  had  any  business  with  him, 


56  WILLIAM  PENN 

he  should  have  immediate  entrance  and  at- 
tention. 

Fox  was  not  set  at  liberty  by  reason  of 
this  interview.  The  king  was  willing  to 
pardon  Fox,  but  Fox  was  not  willing  to  be 
pardoned;  having,  as  he  insisted,  done  no 
wrong.  Penn,  however,  had  learned  that 
the  royal  duke  remembered  the  admi- 
ral's son.  It  was  an  important  fact,  and 
William  thereafter  kept  it  well  in  mind. 
That  it  was  a  turning-point  in  his  affairs, 
appears  in  his  reference  to  it  in  a  letter 
which  he  wrote  in  1688  to  a  friend  who  had 
reproached  him  for  his  attendance  at  court. 
"I  have  made  it,"  he  says,  "my  province 
and  business;  I  have  followed  and  pressed 
it ;  I  took  it  for  my  calling  and  station,  and 
have  kept  it  above  these  sixteen  years." 

Penn  went  back  to  Eickmansworth,  and 
for  a  time  life  went  on  as  before.  We  get 
a  glimpse  of  it  in  the  good  and  wholesome 
orders  which  he  established  for  the  well- 
governing  of  his  family.  In  winter,  they 
were  to  rise  at  seven ;  in  summer  at  five. 
Breakfast  was  at  nine,  dinner  at  twelve, 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  57 

supper  at  seven.  Each  meal  was  preceded  by 
family  prayers.  At  the  devotions  before  din- 
ner, the  Bible  was  read  aloud,  together  with 
chapters  from  the  "  Book  of  Martyrs,"  or 
the  writings  of  Friends.  After  supper,  the 
servants  appeared  before  the  master  and 
mistress,  and  gave  an  account  of  their  do- 
ings during  the  day,  and  got  their  orders 
for  the  morrow.  "  They  were  to  avoid  loud 
discourse  and  troublesome  noises  ;  they  were 
not  to  absent  themselves  without  leave; 
they  were  not  to  go  to  any  public  house  but 
upon  business ;  and  they  were  not  to  loiter, 
or  enter  into  unprofitable  talk,  while  on  an 
errand." 

With  the  canceling  of  the  Indulgence,  the 
persecution  of  the  Quakers  was  renewed. 
Their  houses  were  entered,  their  furniture 
was  seized,  their  cattle  were  driven  away, 
and  themselves  thrust  into  jail.  When  no 
offense  was  clearly  proved  against  them, 
the  oath  was  tendered,  and  the  refusal  to 
take  it  meant  a  serious  inprisonment. 

Under  these  circumstances,  Penn  wrote  a 
"  Treatise  on  Oaths."  He  also  addressed  the 


58  WILLIAM  PENN 

general  public  with  "  England's  Present  In- 
terest Considered,"  an  argument  against  the 
attempt  to  compel  uniformity  of  belief.  He 
petitioned  the  king  and  Parliament  in  "  The 
Continued  Cry  of  the  Oppressed."  "  William 
Brazier,"  he  said,  "  shoemaker  at  Cambridge, 
was  fined  by  John  Hunt,  mayor,  and  John 
Spenser,  vice-chancellor,  twenty  pounds  for 
holding  a  peaceable  religious  meeting  in  his 
own  house.  The  officer  who  distrained  for 
this  sum  took  his  leather  last,  the  seat  he 
worked  upon,  wearing  clothes,  bed,  and  bed- 
ding." "  In  Cheshire,  Justice  Daniel  of 
Danesbury  took  from  Briggs  and  others  the 
value  of  one  hundred  and  sixteen  pounds, 
fifteen  shillings  and  tenpence  in  coin,  kine, 
and  horses.  The  latter  he  had  the  auda- 
city to  retain  and  work  for  his  own  use," 
and  so  on,  instance  after  instance.  Penn's 
acquaintance  at  court  and  his  friendships 
with  persons  of  position  never  made  him  an 
aristocrat.  He  was  fraternally  interested  in 
farmers  and  cobblers,  and  cared  for  the  plain 
people.  Quakerism,  as  he  held  it,  was  in- 
deed a  system  of  theology  which  he  studi- 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  59 

ously  taught,  but  it  was  also,  and  quite  as 
much,  a  social  and  intellectual  democracy. 
What  he  mightily  liked  about  it  was  that 
abandonment  of  artificial  distinctions,  where- 
by all  Quakers  addressed  their  neighbors  by 
their  Christian  names,  and  that  refusal  to 
be  held  by  formulas  of  faith,  whereby  they 
were  left  free  to  accept  such  beliefs,  and 
such  only,  as  appealed  to  their  own  reason. 

About  this  time  he  engaged  in  controversy 
with  Mr.  Richard  Baxter.  Baxter  is  chiefly 
remembered  as  the  author  of  "The  Saints' 
Everlasting  Rest,"  but  he  was  a  most  mili- 
tant person,  who  rejoiced  greatly  in  a  theo- 
logical fight.  Passing  by  Rickmansworth, 
and  finding  many  Quakers  there,  —  to  him  a 
sad  spectacle,  —  he  sought  to  reclaim  them, 
and  thus  fell  speedily  into  debate  with  Penn. 
The  two  argued  from  ten  in  the  morning 
until  five  in  the  afternoon,  a  great  crowd 
listening  all  the  time  with  breathless  interest. 
Neither  could  get  the  other  to  surrender; 
but  so  much  did  William  enjoy  the  exercise 
that  he  offered  Baxter  a  room  in  his  house, 
that  they  might  argue  every  day. 


60  WILLIAM  PENN 

In  1677,  having  now  removed  to  an  estate 
of  his  wife's  at  Worminghurst,  in  Sussex, 
Penn,  in  company  with  Fox,  Barclay,  and 
other  Quakers,  made  a  "  religious  voyage  " 
into  Holland  and  Germany,  preaching  the 
gospel.  His  journal  of  these  travels  is 
printed  in  his  works.  "  At  Osnaburg,"  he 
writes,  "  we  had  a  little  time  with  the  man  of 
the  inn  where  we  lay ;  and  left  him  several 
good  books  of  Friends,  in  the  High  and  Low 
Dutch  tongues,  to  read  and  dispose  of." 
Then,  in  the  next  sentence,  he  continues,  "  the 
next  morning,  being  the  fifth  day  of  the  week, 
we  set  forward  to  Herwerden,  and  came 
thither  at  night.  This  is  the  city  where  the 
Princess  Elizabeth  Palatine  hath  her  court, 
whom,  and  the  countess  in  company  with  her, 
it  was  especially  upon  us  to  visit."  Thus 
they  went,  ministering  to  high  and  low  alike, 
in  their  democratic  Christian  way  making  no 
distinction  between  tavern-keepers  and  prin- 
cesses. As  they  talked  with  Elizabeth  and 
her  friend  the  countess,  discoursing  upon 
heavenly  themes,  they  were  interrupted  by 
the  rattling  of  a  coach,  and  callers  were 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  61 

announced.  The  countess  "  fetched  a  deep 
sigh,  crying  out,  6  O  the  cumber  and  entan- 
glements of  this  vain  world !  They  hinder 
all  good.'  Upon  which,"  says  William,  "  I 
replied,  looking  her  steadfastly  in  the  face, 
6  O  come  thou  out  of  them,  then.' "  This 
journey  was  of  great  importance  as  affecting 
afterwards  the  population  of  Pennsylvania. 
Here  it  was  that  Penn  met  various  com- 
munities ".of  a  separating  and  seeking  turn 
of  mind,"  who  found  in  him  a  kindred  spirit. 
When  he  established  his  colony,  many  of 
them  came  out  and  joined  it,  becoming  the 

"Pennsylvania  Dutch."    „ k 

During  these  travels  Penn  wrote  letters  to 
the  Prince  Elector  of  Heidelberg,  to  the  Graf 
of  Bruch  and  Falschenstein,  to  the  King  of 
Poland,  together  with  an  epistle  "  To  the 
Churches  of  Jesus  throughout  the  world." 
This  was  a  kind  of  correspondence  in  which 
he  delighted.  Like  Wesley,  after  him,  he 
had  taken  the  world  for  his  parish.  He  con- 
sidered himself  a  citizen  of  the  planet,  and 
took  an  episcopal  and  pontifical  interest  in  the 
affairs  of  men  and  nations.  He  combined 


62  WILLIAM  PENN 

in  an  unusual  way  the  qualities  of  the  saint 
and  the  statesman.  His  mind  was  at  the 
same  time  religious  and  political.  Accord- 
ingly, as  he  came  to  have  a  better  acquaint- 
ance with  himself,  he  entered  deliberately 
upon  a  course  of  life  in  which  these  two 
elements  of  his  character  could  have  free 
play.  He  applied  himself  to  the  task  of  ' 
making  politics  contribute  to  the  advance-* 
ment  of  religion.  Many  men  before  him 
had  been  eminently  successful  in  making 
politics  contribute  to  the  advancement  of  the 
church.  Penn's  purpose  was  deeper  and 
better. 

He  came  near,  at  this  time,  to  getting  Par- 
liament to  assent  to  a  provision  permitting 
Quakers  to  affirm,  without  oath;  but  the 
sudden  proroguing  of  that  body  prevented. 
In  the  general  election  which  followed,  he 
made  speeches  for  Algernon  Sidney,  who 
was  standing  for  a  place  in  Parliament."  He 
wrote  "England's  Great  Interest  in  the 
Choice  of  a  New  Parliament,"  and  "  One  Pro- 
ject for  the  Good  of  England."  The  project 
wasfthat  Protestants  should  stop  contending 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  63 

one  with  another  and  unite  against  a  com- 
mon enemy.  \ 

This  was  in  1679.  The  next  year  he 
took  the  decisive  step.  He  entered  upon 
the  fulfillment  of  that  great  plan,  which  had 
been  in  his  mind  since  his  student  days  at 
Oxford,  and  with  which  he  was  occupied  all 
the  rest  of  his  life.  He  began  to  undertake 
the  planting  of  a  colony  across  the  sea. 

Penn  had  already  had  some  experience  in 
colonial  affairs.  With  the  downfall  of  the 
Dutch  dominion  in  the  New  World,  England 
had  come  into  possession  of  two  important 
rivers,  the  Hudson  and  the  Delaware,  and  of 
the  countries  which  they  drained.  Of  these 
estates,  the  Duke  of  York  had  become  owner 
of  New  Jersey.  He,  in  turn,  dividing  it  into 
two  portions,  west  and  east,  had  sold  West 
Jersey  to  Lord  Berkeley,  and  East  Jersey 
to  Sir  George  Carteret.  Berkeley  had  sold 
West  Jersey  to  a  Quaker,  John  Fen  wick,  in 
trust  for  another  Quaker,  Edward  Byllinge. 
These  Quakers,  disagreeing,  had  asked  Penn 
to  arbitrate  between  them.  Byllinge  had 
fallen  into  bankruptcy,  and  his  lands  had  been 


64  WILLIAM  PENN 

transferred  to  Penn  as  receiver  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  creditors.  Thus  William  had  come 
into  a  position  of  importance  in  the  affairs 
of  West  Jersey.  Presently,  in  1679,  East 
Jersey  came  also  into  the  market,  and  Penn 
and  eleven  others  bought  it  at  auction. 
These  twelve  took  in  other  twelve,  and  the 
twenty-four  appointed  a  Quaker  governor, 
^  Robert  Barclay. 

Now,  in  1680,  having  had  his  early  interest 
in  America  thus  renewed  and  strengthened, 
Penn  found  that  the  king  was  in  his  debt 
to  the  amount  of  sixteen  thousand  pounds. 
Part  of  this  money  had  been  loaned  to  the 
king  by  William's  father,  the  admiral ;  part 
of  it  was  the  admiral's  unpaid  salary.  Mr. 
Pepys  has  recorded  in  his  diary  how  scandal- 
ously Charles  left  his  officers  unpaid.  The 
king,  he  says,  could  not  walk  in  his  own 
house  without  meeting  at  every  hand  men 
whom  he  was  ruining,  while  at  the  same  time 
he  was  spending  money  prodigally  upon  his 
pleasures.  Pepys  himself  fell  into  poverty 
in  his  old  age,  accounting  the  king  to  be  in 
debt  to  him  in  the  sum  of  twenty-eight  thou- 
sand pounds. 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  65 

Perm  considered  his  account  collectible. 
"  I  have  been,"  he  wrote,  "  these  thirteen 
years  the  servant  of  Truth  and  Friends,  and 
for  my  testimony's  sake  lost  much,  —  not  only 
the  greatness  and  preferment  of  the  world, 
but  sixteen  thousand  pounds  of  my  estate 
which,  had  I  not  been  what  I  am,  I  had  long 
ago  obtained."  It  is  doubtful,  however,  if 
the  king  would  have  ever  paid  a  penny.  It 
is  certain  that  when  William  offered  to  ex- 
change the  money  for  a  district  in  America, 
Charles  agreed  to  the  bargain  with  great  joy. 

The  territory  thus  bestowed  was  "  all  that  j 
tract  or  part  of  land  in  America,  bounded  on 
the  east  by  the  Delaware  River,  from  twelve 
miles  northward  of  New  Castle  town  unto  the 
three  and  fortieth  degree  of  northern  latitude. 
The  said  land  to  extend  westward  five  de- 
grees in  longitude,  to  be  computed  from  the 
said  eastern  bounds,  and  the  said  lands  to 
be  bounded  on  the  north  by  the  beginning  of 
the  three  and  fortieth  degree  of  northern  lat- 
itude and  on  the  south  by  a  circle  drawn 
at  twelve  miles  distance  from  New  Castle, 
northward  and  westward,  unto  the  beginning 


66  WILLIAM  PENN 

of  the  fortieth  degree  of  northern  latitude, 
and  then  by  a  straight  line  westward  to  the 
limits  of  longitude  above  mentioned." 

This  was  a  country  almost  as  large  as  Eng- 
land. No  such  extensive  domain  had  ever 
been  given  to  a  subject  by  an  English  sover- 
eign :  but  none  had  ever  been  paid  for  by  a 
sum  of  money  so  substantial. 

On  the  4th  of  March,  1681,  the  charter 
received  the  signature  of  Charles  the  Second. 
On  the  21st  of  August,  1682,  the  Duke  of 
York  signed  a  deed  whereby  he  released  the 
tract  of  land  called  Pennsylvania  to  William 
Penn  and  his  heirs  forever.  About  the  same 
time,  by  a  like  deed,  the  duke  conveyed  to 
Penn  the  district  which  is  now  called  Dela- 
ware. Penn  agreed,  on  his  part,  as  a  feudal 
subject,  to  render  yearly  to  the  king  two  skins 
of  beaver,  and  a  fifth  part  of  all  the  gold  and 
silver  found  in  the  ground ;  and  to  the  duke 
"  one  rose  at  the  feast  of  St.  Michael  the 
Archangel." 

This  association  of  sentiment  and  religion 
with  a  transaction  in  real  estate  is  a  fitting 
symbol  of  the  spirit  in  which  the  Pennsyl- 


PENN'S  POLITICAL  LIFE  67 

vania  colony  was  undertaken  Penn  received 
the  land  as  a  sacred  trust.  It  was  regarded 
by  him  not  as  a  personal  estate,  but  as  a  re- 
ligious possession  to  be  held  for  the  good  of 
humanity,  for  the  advancement  of  the  cause  of 
freedom,  for  the  furtherance  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.  He  wrote  at  the  time  to  a  friend 
that  he  had  obtained  it  in  the  name  of  God, 
that  thus  he  may  "  serve  his  truth  and  people, 
and  that  an  example  may  be  set  up  to  the 
nations.  He  believed  that  there  was  room 
there  "  for  such  an  holy  experiment." 


VI 

THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA:  PENN*S 
FIRST  VISIT  TO  THE  PROVINCE 

THAT  Penn  undertook  the  "  holy  experi- 
ment "  without  expectation  or  desire  of 
profit  appears  not  only  in  his  conviction 
that  he  was  thereby  losing  sixteen  thousand 
pounds,  but  in  his  refusal  to  make  his  new 
estates  a  means  of  gain.  "He  is  offered 
great  things,"  says  James  Claypole  in  a  let- 
ter dated  September,  1681,  "  £6000  for  a 
monopoly  in  trade,  which  he  refused.  .  .  . 
He  designs  to  do  things  equally  between  all 
parties,  and  I  believe  truly  does  aim  more 
at  justice  and  righteousness  and  spreading 
of  truth  than  at  his  own  particular  gain." 
"  I  would  not  abuse  His  love,"  said  Penn, 
"  nor  act  unworthy  of  His  providence,  and 
so  defile  what  came  to  me  clean.  No,  let 
the  iiord  guide  me  by  His  wisdom,  and  pre- 
serve me  to  honour  His  name,  and  serve 


SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  69 

His  truth  and  people,  that  an  example  and 
standard  may  be  set  up  to  the  nations." 

So  far  removed  was  he  from  all  self- 
seeking,  that  he  was  even  unwilling  to  have 
the  colony  bear  his  name.  "  I  chose  New 
Wales,"  he  says,  recounting  the  action  of 
the  king's  council,  "  being,  as  this,  a  pretty 
hilly  country, — but  Penn  being  Welsh  for 
head,  as  Pennanmoire  in  Wales,  and  Pen- 
rith  in  Cumberland,  and  Penn  in  Bucking- 
hamshire, the  highest  land  in  England  — 
[the  king]  called  this  Pennsylvania,  which 
is  the  high  or  head  woodlands ;  for  I  pro- 
posed, when  the  secretary,  a  Welshman, 
refused  to  have  it  called  New  Wales,  Syl- 
vania,  and  they  added  Penn  to  it ;  and 
though  I  much  opposed  it,  and  went  to  the 
king  to  have  it  struck  out  and  altered,  he 
said  it  was  past,  and  he  would  take  it  upon 
him ;  nor  could  twenty  guineas  move  the  un- 
der-secret ary  to  vary  the  name,  for  I  feared 
lest  it  should  be  looked  on  as  a  vanity  in 
me,  and  not  as  a  respect  in  the  king,  as  it 
truly  was,  to  my  father,  whom  he  often 
mentions  with  praise." 


70  WILLIAM  PENN 

The  charter  gave  the  land  to  Penn  as  the 
king's  tenant.  He  had  power  to  make  laws ; 
though  this  power  was  to  be  exercised, 
except  in  emergencies,  "  with  the  advice, 
assent,  and  approbation  of  the  freemen  of 
the  territory,"  and  subject  to  the  confirma- 
tion of  the  Privy  Council.  He  was  to  ap- 
point judges  and  other  officers.  He  had  the 
right  to  assess  custom  on  goods  laden  and 
unladen,  for  his  own  benefit ;  though  he  was 
to  take  care  to  do  it  "  reasonably,"  and  with 
the  advice  of  the  assembly  of  freemen.  He 
was,  at  the  same  time,  to  be  free  from  any 
tax  or  custom  of  the  king,  except  by  his  own 
consent,  or  by  the  consent  of  his  governor 
or  assembly,  or  by  act  of  Parliament.  He 
was  not  to  maintain  correspondence  with 
any  king  or  power  at  war  with  England,  nor 
to  make  war  against  any  king  or  power  in 
amity  with  the  same.  If  as  many  as  twenty 
of  his  colonists  should  ask  a  minister  from 
the  Bishop  of  London,  such  minister  was  to 
be  received  without  denial  or  molestation. 

The  next  important  document  to  be  pre- 
pared was  the  Constitution,  or  Frame  of 


SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA    71 

Government,  and  to  the  task  of  composing 
it  Penn  gave  a  great  amount  of  time  and 
care.  It  was  jJHmled  by  two  statements 
of  principles,  —  the  Preface  and  the  Great 
Fundamental. 

The  Preface  declared  the  political  policy 
of  the  proprietor.  "  Government,"  he  said, 
"  seems  to  me  a  part  of  religion  itself,  a  thing 
sacred  in  its  institution  and  end*"  As  for 
the  debate  between  monarchy,  aristocracy, 
and  democracy,  "  I  choose,"  he  said,  "  to 
solve  the  controversy  with  this  small  distinc- 
tion, and  it  belongs  to  all  three  :  any  gov- 
ernment is  free  to  the  people  under  it, 
whatever  be  the  frame,  where  the  laws  rule, 
and  the  people  are  a  party  to  those  laws." 
His  purpose,  he  says,  is  to  establish  "  the 
great  end  of  all  government,  viz.,  to  support 
power  in  reverence  with  the  people,  and  to 
secure  the  people  from  the  abuse  of  power, 
that  they  may  be  free  by  their  just  obedi- 
ence, and  the  magistrates  honourable  for 
their  just  administration  ;  for  liberty  without 
obedience  is  confusion,  and  obedience  with- 
out liberty  is  slavery." 


72  WILLIAM  PENN 

In  a  private  letter,  written  about  the  same 
time,  Penn  stated  his  political  position  in 
several  concrete  sentences  which  interpret 
these  fine  but  rather  vague  pronouncements. 
"  For  the  matters  of  liberty  and  privilege," 
he  wrote,  "  I  propose  that  which  is  extraor- 
dinary, and  to  leave  myself  and  successors 
no  power  of  doing  mischief,  that  the  will  of 
one  man  may  not  hinder  the  good  of  an 
whole  country ;  but  to  publish  these  things 
now  and  here,  as  matters  stand,  would  not 
be  wise." 

The  Great  Fundamental  set  forth  the 
ecclesiastical  policy  of  the  founder :  "In 
reverence  to  God,  the  father  of  light  and 
spirits,  the  author  as  well  as  the  object  of 
all  divine  knowledge,  faith  and  workings,  I 
do,  for  me  and  mine,  declare  and  establish 
for  the  first  fundamental  of  the  government 
of  my  province,  that  every  person  that  doth 
and  shall  reside  there  shall  have  and  enjoy 
the  free  profession  of  his  or  her  faith  and  ex- 
ercise of  worship  towards  God,  in  such  way 
and  manner  as  every  such  person  shall  in 
conscience  believe  is  most  acceptable  to  God." 


SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  73 

These  principles  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty  constituted  the  "holy  experiment." 
They  made  the  difference  between  Penn's 
colony  and  almost  every  other  government 
then  existing.  In  their  influence  and  contin- 
uance, until  at  last  they  were  incorporated  in 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  they 
are  the  chief  contribution  of  William  Penn 
to  the  progress  of  our  institutions. 

"  All  Europe  with  amazement  saw 
The  soul's  high  freedom  trammeled  by  no  law." 

The  Constitution  was  drawn  up  in  Articles 
to  the  number  of  twenty-four,  and  these  were 
followed  by  forty  Laws. 

The  Articles  provided  for  a  governor,  to 
be  appointed  by  the  proprietor,  and  for  two 
legislative  bodies,  a  provincial  council  and  a 
general  assembly.  The  provincial  council 
was  to  consist  of  seventy-two  members.  Of 
these  a  third  were  elected  for  three  years,  a 
third  for  two,  and  a  third  for  one ;  so  that  by 
the  end  of  the  service  of  the  first  third,  all 
would  have  a  three-year  term,  twenty-four 
going  out  and  having  their  places  filled  each 
year.  The  business  of  the  council  was  to  pre- 


74       .'  WILLIAM  PENN 

pare  laws,  to  see  that  they  were  executed,  and 
in  general  to  provide  for  the  good  conduct 
of  affairs.  The  general  assembly  was  to  con- 
sist of  two  hundred  members,  to  be  chosen 
annually.  They  had  no  right  to  originate 
legislation,  but  were  to  pass  upon  all  bills 
which  had  been  enacted  by  the  council, 
accepting  or  rejecting  them  by  a  vote  of 
yea  or  nay. 

The  Laws  enjoined  that  "  all  persons  who 
confessed  the  one  almighty  and  eternal  God 
to  be  the  Creator,  Upholder,  and  Ruler  of 
the  world,  and  who  held  themselves  obliged 
in  conscience  to  live  peaceably  and  justly  in 
society,  were  in  no  ways  to  be  molested  for 
their  religious  persuasion  and  practice,  nor  to 
be  compelled  at  any  time  to  frequent  any  reli- 
gious place  or  ministry  whatever."  All  chil- 
dren of  the  age  of  twelve  were  to  be  taught 
some  useful  trade.  All  pleadings,  processes, 
and  records  in  the  courts  of  law  were  to  be 
as  short  as  possible.  The  reformation  of  the 
offender  was  to  be  considered  as  a  great  part 
of  the  purpose  of  punishment.  At  a  time 
when  there  were  in  England  two  hundred 


SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  75 

offenses  punishable  by  death,  Penn  reduced 
these  capital  crimes  to  two,  murder  and  trea- 
son. All  prisons  were  to  be  made  into 
workhouses.  No  oath  was  to  be  required. 
Drinking  healths,  selling  rum  to  Indians, 
cursing  and  lying,  fighting  duels,  playing 
cards,  the  pleasures  of  the  theatre,  were  all 
put  under  the  ban  together. 

Penn's  provincial  council  suggested  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States.  As  originally 
established,  however,  the  disproportion  of 
power  between  the  upper  and  the  lower  house 
was  so  great  as  to  cause  much  just  dissat- 
isfaction. The  council  was  in  effect  a  body 
of  seventy-two  governors ;  the  assembly, 
which  more  directly  represented  the  people, 
could  consider  no  laws  save  those  sent  down 
to  them  by  the  council.  The  Constitution 
had  to  be  changed. 

One  of  the  good  qualities  of  the  Constitu- 
tion was  that  it  was  possible  to  change  it. 
It  provided  for  the  process  of  amendment. 
That  customary  article  with  which  all  consti- 
tutions now  end  appeared  for  the  first  time 
in  Penn's  Frame  of  Government.  Another 


76  WILLIAM  PENN 

good  quality  of  the  Constitution  was  that  it 
secured  an  abiding  harmony  between  its  fun- 
damental statements  and  all  further  legisla- 
tion. "  Penn  was  the  first  one  to  hit  upon 
the  foundation  or  first  step  in  the  true  prin- 
ciple, now  the  universal  law  in  the  United 
States,  that  the  unconstitutional  law  is 
void." 

Whatever  help  Penn  may  have  had  in  the 
framing  of  this  legislation,  from  Algernon 
Sidney  and  other  political  friends,  it  is  plain 
that  the  best  part  of  it  was  his  own,  and 
that  he  wrote  it  not  as  a  politician  but  as  a 
Quaker.  It  is  an  application  of  the  Quaker 
principles  of  democracy  and  of  religious  lib- 
erty to  the  conditions  of  a  commonwealth. 
From  beginning  to  end  it  is  the  work  of  a 
man  whose  supreme  interest  was  religion. 
It  is  at  the  same  time  singularly  free  from 
the  narrowness  into  which  men  of  this  ear- 
nest mind  have  often  fallen.  Religion,  as 
Penn  considered  it,  was  not  a  matter  of  or- 
dinances or  rubrics.  It  was  righteousness, 
and  fraternity,  and  liberty  of  conscience. 

In   this  spirit   he  wrote  a   letter  to  the 


SETTLEMENT  OF  PENNSYLVANIA    77 

Indian  inhabitants  of  his  province.  "The 
great  God,  who  is  the  power  and  wisdom 
that  made  you  and  me,  incline  your  hearts  to 
righteousness,  love,  and  peace.  This  I  send 
to  assure  you  of  my  love,  and  to  desire  you  to 
love  my  friends ;  and  when  the  great  God 
brings  me  among  you,  I  intend  to  order  all 
things  in  such  a  manner  that  we  may  all  live 
in  love  and  peace,  one  with  another,  which 
I  hope  the  great  God  will  incline  both  me 
and  you  to  do.  I  seek  nothing  but  the 
honour  of  his  name,  and  that  we,  who  are 
his  workmanship,  may  do  that  which  is 
well  pleasing  to  him.  ...  So  I  rest  in  the 
love  of  God  that  made  us." 

Now  colonists  began  to  seek  this  land  of 
peace  across  the  sea.  A  hundred  acres  were 
promised  for  forty  shillings,  with  a  quit-rent 
of  one  shilling  annually  to  the  proprietor  for- 
ever. In  clearing  the  ground,  care  was  to 
be  taken  to  leave  one  acre  of  trees,  for  every 
five  acres  cleared.  All  transactions  with  the 
Indians  were  to  be  held  in  the  public  market, 
and  all  differences  between  the  white  man 
and  the  red  were  to  be  settled  by  a  jury  of 


78  WILLIAM  PENN 

six  planters  and  six  Indians.  Penn  also 
counseled  prospective  colonists  to  consider 
the  great  inconveniences  which  they  must 
of  necessity  endure,  and  hoped  that  those 
who  went  would  have  "  the  permission  if  not 
the  good  liking  of  their  near  relations." 

There  were  already  in  the  province  some 
two  thousand  people,  besides  Indians,  —  a 
peaceable  and  industrious  folk,  mostly 
Swedes  and  English.  They  had  six  meet- 
ing-houses ;  the  English  settlers  being  Quak- 
ers. They  lived  along  the  banks  of  the  Del- 
aware. In  the  autumn  of  1681,  the  ship 
Sarah  and  John  brought  the  first  of  Penn's 
emigrants,  and  in  December  the  ship  Bris- 
tol Factor  added  others.  In  1682,  Penn 
came  himself. 

The  journey  at  that  time  was  both  long 
and  perilous.  If  it  was  accomplished  in 
two  months,  the  voyage  was  considered  pros- 
perous. To  the  ordinary  dangers  of  the 
deep  was  added  the  terror  of  the  smallpox. 
Scarcely  a  ship  crossed  without  this  dread 
passenger.  William,  accordingly,  as  one 
undertaking  a  desperate  adventure,  took  a 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  79       \ 

tender  leave  of  his  family.  He  wrote  a  let- 
ter whose  counsels  might  guide  them  in  case 
he  never  returned.  "My  dear  wife  and 
children,"  he  said,  "  my  love,  which  neither 
sea,  nor  land,  nor  death  itself  can  extinguish 
or  lessen  towards  you,  most  endearedly  visits 
you  with  eternal  embraces,  and  will  abide 
with  you  forever ;  and  may  the  God  of  my 
life  watch  over  you,  and  bless  you,  and  do 
you  good  in  this  world  and  forever."  "  Be 
diligent,"  'he  advised  his  wife,  "  in  meetings 
for  worship  and  business,  .  .  .  and  let  meet- 
ings be  kept  once  a  day  in  the  family  to  wait 
upon  the  Lord,  .  .  .  and,  my  dearest,  to 
make  thy  family  matters  easy  to  thee,  divide 
thy  time  and  be  regular;  it  is  easy  and 
sweet.  .  .  .  Cast  up  thy  income,  and  see 
what  it  daily  amounts  to,  ...  and  I  beseech 
thee  to  live  low  and  sparingly,  till  my  debts 
are  paid."  As  for  the  children,  they  are  to 
be  bred  up  "  in  the  love  of  virtue,  and  that 
holy  plain  way  of  it,  which  we  have  lived  in, 
that  the  world  in  no  part  of  it  get  into  my 
family."  They  are  to  be  carefully  taught. 
"  For  their  learning  be  liberal,  spare  no 


80  WILLIAM  PENN 

cost."  "Agriculture  is  especially  in  my 
eye ;  let  my  children  be  husbandmen  and 
housewives ;  it  is  industrious,  healthy,  hon- 
est, and  of  good  example."  They  are  to 
honor  and  obey  their  mother,  to  love  not 
money  nor  the  world,  to  be  temperate  in  all 
things.  If  they  come  presently  to  be  con- 
cerned in  the  government  of  Pennsylvania, 
"  I  do  charge  you,"  their  father  wrote,  "  be- 
fore the  Lord  God  and  the  holy  angels,  that 
you  be  lovely,  diligent  and  tender,  fearing 
God,  loving  the  people,  and  hating  covetous- 
ness.  Let  justice  have  its  impartial  course, 
and  the  law  free  passage.  Though  to  your 
loss,  protect  no  man  against  it ;  for  you  are 
not  above  the  law,  but  the  law  above  you. 
Live  the  lives  yourselves,  you  would  have 
the  people  live." 

Unhappily,  of  Guli's  children,  seven  in 
number,  four  died  before  their  mother,  and 
one,  the  eldest  son,  Springett,  shortly  after. 
Springett  inherited  the  devout  spirit  of  his 
parents ;  his  father  wrote  an  affecting  ac- 
count of  his  pious  death.  Of  the  two  re- 
maining, William  fell  into  ways  of  dissipa- 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  81 

tion,  and  Letitia  married  a  man  whom  her 
father  disliked.  Neither  of  them  had  any 
inheritance  in  Pennsylvania. 

Penn's  ship,  the  Welcome,  carried  a  hun- 
dred passengers,  most  of  them  Quakers  from 
his  own  neighborhood.  A  third  part  died 
of  smallpox  on  the  way.  On  the  24th  of 
October,  he  sighted  land ;  on  the  27th,  he 
arrived  before  Newcastle,  in  Delaware  ;  on 
the  28th,  he  landed.  Here  he  formally  re- 
ceived turf  and  twig,  water  and  soil,  hi  token 
of  his  ownership.  On  the  29th,  he  entered 
Pennsylvania.  Adding  ten  days  to  this  date, 
to  bring  it  into  accord  with  our  present  calen- 
dar, we  have  November  8  as  the  day  of  his 
arrival  in  the  province.  The  place  was  Up- 
land, where  there  was  a  settlement  already ; 
the  name  was  that  day  changed  to  Chester. 

Penn  was  greatly  pleased  with  his  new 
possessions.  He  wrote  a  description  of  the 
country  for  the  Free  Society  of  Traders. 
The  air,  he  said,  was  sweet  and  clear,  and 
the  heavens  serene.  Trees,  fruits,  and  flow- 
ers grew  in  abundance  :  especially  a  "  great, 
red  grape,"  and  a  "  white  kind  of  muskadel," 


82  WILLIAM  PENN 

out  of  which  he  hopes  it  may  be  possible  to 
make  good  wine.  The  ground  was  fertile. 
The  Indians  he  found  to  be  tall,  straight, 
and  well  built,  walking  "  with  a  lofty  chin." 
Their  language  was  "  like  the  Hebrew,"  and 
he  guessed  that  they  were  descended  from 
the  ten  lost  tribes  of  Israel.  Light  of  heart, 
they  seemed  to  him,  with  "  strong  affections, 
but  soon  spent ;  .  .  .  the  most  merry  crea- 
tures that  live."  Though  they  were  "  under 
a  dark  night  in  things  relating  to  religion," 
yet  were  they  believers  in  God  and  immor- 
tality. 

"  I  bless  the  Lord,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter, 
"  I  am  very  well,  and  much  satisfied  with 
my  place  and  portion.  O  how  sweet  is  the , 
quiet  of  these  parts,  freed  from  the  anxious/ 
and  troublesome  solicitations,  hurries,  and 
solicitations  of  woeful  Europe  !  " 

In  the  midst  of  these  fair  regions,  beside 
the  "  wedded  rivers,"  the  Delaware  and  the 
Schuylkill,  in  the  convenient  neighborhood 
of  quarries  of  building  stone,  at  a  place 
which  the  Indians  called  Coaquannoc,  he 
established  his  capital  city,  calling  it  Phila- 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  83 

delphia,  —  perhaps  in  token  of  the  spirit 
of  brotherly  love  in  which  it  was  founded, 
perhaps  in  remembrance  of  those  seven 
cities  of  the  Revelation  wherein  was  that 
primitive  Christianity  which  he  wished  to 
reproduce. 

Here  he  had  his  rowers  run  his  boat 
ashore  at  the  mouth  of  Dock  Creek,  which 
now  runs  under  Dock  Street,  where  several 
men  were  engaged  in  building  a  house, 
which  was  afterwards  called  the  Blue  An- 
chor Tavern.  Penn  brought  a  considerable 
company  with  him.  In  the  minutes  of  a 
Friends'  meeting  held  on  the  8th  (18th) 
of  November,  1682,  at  Shackamaxon,  now 
Kensington,  it  was  recorded  that,  "  at  this 
time,  Governor  Penn  and  a  multitude  of 
Friends  arrived  here,  and  erected  a  city 
called  Philadelphia,  about  half  a  mile  from 
Shackamaxon."  Presently,  the  Indians  ap- 
peared. They  offered  Penn  of  their  hominy 
and  roasted  acorns,  and,  after  dinner,  showed 
him  how  they  could  hop  and  jump.  He  is 
said  to  have  entered  heartily  into  these  exer- 
cises, and  to  have  jumped  farther  than  any 
of  them. 


84  WILLIAM  PENN 

The  governor  had  already  determined  the 
plan  of  the  city.  There  were  to  be  two 
large  streets,  —  one  fronting  the  Delaware 
on  the  east,  the  other  fronting  the  Schuyl- 
kill  on  the  west ;  a  third  avenue,  to  be 
called  High  Street  (now  Market),  was  to 
run  from  river  to  river,  east  and  west ;  and 
a  fourth,  called  Broad  Street,  was  to  cross 
it  at  right  angles,  north  and  south.  Twenty 
streets  were  to  lie  parallel  with  Broad,  and 
to  be  named  First  Street,  Second  Street,  and 
so  on  in  order,  in  the  plain  Quaker  fash- 
ion which  had  thus  entitled  the  days  of  the 
week  and  the  months  of  the  year.  Eight 
were  to  lie  parallel  with  High,  and  to  be 
called  after  the  trees  of  the  forest,  —  Spruce, 
Chestnut,  Pine.  In  the  midst  of  the  city, 
at  the  crossing  of  High  and  Broad  Streets, 
was  to  be  a  square  of  ten  acres,  to  contain 
the  public  offices ;  and  in  each  quarter  of 
the  city  was  to  be  a  similar  open  space  for 
walks.  The  founder  intended  to  allow  no 
house  to  be  built  on  the  river  banks,  keep- 
ing them  open  and  beautiful.  Could  he 
have  foreseen  the  future,  he  would  have 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  85 

made  the  streets  wider.  He  had  in  mind, 
however,  only  a  country  town.  "  Let  every 
house  be  placed,"  he  directed,  "  if  the  person 
pleases,  in  the  middle  of  its  plot,  as  to  the 
breadth  way  of  it,  that  so  there  may  be 
ground  on  each  side  for  gardens  or  orchards 
or  fields,  that  it  may  be  a  green  country 
town,  which  will  never  be  burnt  and  always 
wholesome." 

Among  those  houses  was  his  own,  a  mod- 
est structure  made  of  brick,  standing  "  on 
Front  Street  south  of  the  present  Market 
Street,"  and  still  preserved  in  Fairmont 
Park.  He  afterwards  gave  it  to  his  daugh- 
ter Letitia,  and  it  was  called  Letitia  House, 
from  her  ownership. 

In  the  mean  time,  he  was  making  his 
famous  treaty  with  the  Indians.  Penn  rec- 
ognized the  Indians  as  the  actual  owners 
of  the  land.  He  bought  it  of  them  as  he 
needed  it.  The  transfer  of  property  thus 
made  was  a  natural  occasion  of  mutual 
promises.  As  there  were  several  such  meet- 
ings between  the  Quakers  and  the  Indians, 
it  is  difficult  to  fix  a  date  to  mark  the  fact. 


86  WILLIAM  PENN 

One  meeting  took  place,  it  is  said,  under  a 
spreading  elm  at  Shackamaxon.  The  com- 
monly accepted  date  is  the  23d  of  June, 
1683.  The  elm  was  blown  down  in  1810. 
There  is  a  persistent  tradition  to  the  effect 
that  William  was  distinguished  from  his 
fellow  Quakers  in  this  transaction  by  wear- 
ing a  sky-blue  sash  of  silk  network.  But 
of  this,  as  of  most  other  details  of  ceremony 
in  connection  with  the  matter,  we  know 
nothing. 

Penn  gives  a  general  description  of,  his 
various  conferences  upon  this  business. 
"  Their  order,"  he  says,  "  is  thus :  the  king 
sits  in  the  middle  of  a  half -moon,  and  has 
his  council,  the  old  and  wise,  on  each  hand. 
Behind  them,  or  at  a  little  distance,  sit  the 
younger  fry  in  the  same  figure."  Then  one 
speaks  in  their  king's  name,  and  Penn 
answers.  "  When  the  purchase  was  agreed 
great  promises  passed  between  us  of  kind- 
ness and  good  neighbourhood,  and  that  the 
English  and  the  Indians  must  live  in  love 
as  long  as  the  sun  gave  light,  ...  at  every 
sentence  of  which  they  shouted,  and  said 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  87 

Amen,  in  their  way."  Some  earnestness  may 
have  been  added  to  these  assuring  responses 
by  the  Indians'  consciousness  of  the  fact 
that  the  advantages  of  the  bargain  were  not 
all  on  one  side.  The  Pennsylvania  tribes 
had  been  thoroughly  conquered  by  the  Five 
Nations.  There  was  little  heart  left  in 
them.  But  their  condition  detracts  nothing 
from  Perm's  Christian  brotherliness. 

In  some  such  manner  the  great  business 
was  enacted.  "  This,"  said  Voltaire,  "  was 
the  only  treaty  between  these  people  and 
the  Christians  that  was  not  ratified  by  an 
oath,  and  that  was  never  broken."  That  it 
was  never  broken  was  the  capital  fact. 
Herein  it  differed  from  a  thousand  other 
treaties  made  before  or  since.  In  the  midst 
of  the  long  story  of  the  misdealings  of  the 
white  men  with  the  red,  which  begins  with 
Cortez  and  Pizarro,  and  is  still  continued  in 
the  daily  newspapers,  this  justice  and  hon- 
esty of  William  Penn  is  a  point  of  light. 
That  Penn  treated  the  Indians  as  neighbors 
and  brothers ;  that  he  paid  them  fairly  for 
every  acre  of  their  land ;  that  the  promises 


88  WILLIAM  PENN 

which  he  made  were  ever  after  unfailingly 
*kept  is  perhaps  his  best  warrant  of  abiding 
fame.  Like  his  constitutional  establishment 
of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  it  was  a  direct 
result  of  his  Quaker  principles.  It  was  a 
manifestation  of  that  righteousness  which  he 
was  continually  preaching  and  practicing. 

The  kindness  and  courtly  generosity  which 
Penn  showed  in  his  bargains  with  the  In- 
dians is  happily  illustrated  in  one  of  his 
purchases  of  land.  The  land  was  to  extend 
"  as  far  back  as  a  man  could  walk  in  three 
days."  William  walked  out  a  day  and  a 
half  of  it,  taking  several  chiefs  with  him, 
"  leisurely,  after  the  Indian  manner,  sitting 
down  sometimes  to  smoke  their  pipes,  to  eat 
biscuit  and  cheese,  and  drink  a  bottle  of 
wine."  Thus  they  covered  less  than  thirty 
miles.  In  1733,  the  then  governor  em- 
ployed the  fastest  walker  he  could  find,  who 
in  the  second  day  and  a  half  marked  eighty- 
six  miles. 

The  treaty  gave  the  nerw  colony  a  sub- 
stantial advantage.  The  Lenni  Lenape,  the 
Mingoes,  the  Shawnees  accounted  Penn's 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  89 

settlers  as  their  friends.  The  word  went 
out  among  the  tribes  that  what  Penn  said 
he  meant,  and  that  what  he  promised  he 
would  fulfill  faithfully.  Thus  the  planters 
were  freed  from  the  terror  of  the  forest 
which  haunted  their  neighbors,  north  and 
south.  They  could  found  cities  in  the  wil- 
derness and  till  their  scattered  farms  with- 
out fear  of  tomahawk  or  firebrand.  Penn 
himself  went  twenty  miles  from  Philadel- 
phia, near  the  present  Bristol,  to  lay  out  his 
country  place  of  Pennsbury.  i~ 

Ships  were  now  arriving  with  sober  and 
industrious  emigrants  ;  trees  were  coming 
down,  houses  were  going  up.  In  July,  1683, 
Penn  wrote  to  Henry  Sidney,  in  England, 
reminding  him  that  he  had  promised  to  send 
some  fruit-trees,  and  describing  the  condi- 
tion of  the  colony.  "  We  have  laid  out  a 
town  a  mile  long  and  two  miles  deep.  ...  I 
think  we  have  near  about  eighty  houses 
built,  and  about  three  hundred  farms  settled 
round  the  town.  .  .  .  We  have  had  fifty  sail 
of  ships  and  small  vessels,  since  the  last 
summer,  in  our  river,  which  shows  a  good 


90  WILLIAM  PENN 

beginning."  "  I  am  mightily  taken  with  this 
part  of  the  world,"  he  wrote  to  Lord  Cul- 
peper,  who  had  come  to  be  governor  of 
Virginia,  "  I  like  it  so  well,  that  a  plenti- 
ful estate,  and  a  great  acquaintance  on  the 
other  side,  have  no  charms  to  remove ;  my 
family  being  once  fixed  with  me,  and  if  no 
other  thing  occur,  I  am  likely  to  be  an 
adopted  American."  "  Our  heads  are  dull," 
he  added,  "  but  our  hearts  are  good  and  our 
hands  strong." 

In  the  midst  of  this  peace  and  prosperity, 
however,  there  was  a  serious  trouble.  This 
was  a  dispute  with  Lord  Baltimore  over  the 
dividing  line  between  Pennsylvania  and  Ma- 
ryland. By  the  inaccuracy  of  surveyors,  the 
confusion  of  maps,  and  the  indefiniteness  of 
charters,  Baltimore  believed  himself  entitled 
to  a  considerable  part  of  the  territory  which 
was  claimed  by  Penn,  including  even  Phila- 
delphia. The  two  proprietors  had  already 
discussed  the  question  without  settlement ; 
indeed,  it  remained  a  cause  of  contention 
for  some  seventy  years.  As  finally  settled, 
in  1732,  between  the  heirs  of  Penn  and  of 


PENN'S  FIRST  VISIT  91 

Baltimore,  a  line  was  established  from  Cape 
Henlopen  west  to  a  point  half  way  between 
Delaware  Bay  and  Chesapeake  Bay ;  thence 
north  to  twelve  miles  west  of  Newcastle, 
and  so  on  to  fifteen  miles  south  of  Philadel- 
phia ;  thence  due  west.  The  surveyors  were 
Charles  Mason  and  Jeremiah  Dixon,  and 
the  line  was  thus  called  Mason  and  Dixon's 
Line.  This  boundary  afterwards  parted  the 
free  States  from  the  slave  States.  South  of 
it  was  "  Dixie." 

Penn  now  learned  that  Lord  Baltimore 
was  on  his  way  to  England  to  lay  the  ques- 
tion before  the  Privy  Council.  The  situation 
demanded  William's  presence.  "  I  am  fol- 
lowing him  as  fast  as  I  can,"  he  wrote  to  the 
Duke  of  York,  praying  "  that  a  perfect  stop 
be  put  to  all  his  proceedings  till  I  come." 
He  therefore  took  leave  of  his  friends  in  the 
province,  commissioned  the  provincial  council 
to  act  in  his  stead,  and  in  August,  1684, 
having  been  two  years  in  America,  he  em- 
barked for  home. 

On  board  the  Endeavour,  on  the  eve  of  sail- 
ing, he  wrote  a  farewell  letter.  "  And  thou, 


92  WILLIAM  PENN 

Philadelphia,"  he  said,  "  the  virgin  settlement 
of  this  province,  named  before  thou  wert 
born,  what  love,  what  care,  what  service  and 
what  travail  has  there  been  to  bring  thee 
forth  and  preserve  thee  from  such  as  would 
abuse  and  defile  thee !  O  that  thou  mayest 
be  kept  from  the  evil  that  would  overwhelm 
thee ;  that  faithful  to  the  God  of  mercies  in 
the  life  of  righteousness,  thou  mayest  be  pre- 
served to  the  end.  My  soul  prays  to  God  for 
thee  that  thou  mayest  stand  in  the  day  of 
trial,  that  thy  children  may  be  blessed  of  the 
Lord,  and  thy  people  saved  by  thy  power. 
My  love  to  thee  has  been  great,  and  the 
remembrance  of  thee  affects  mine  heart  and 
mine  eye.  The  God  of  eternal  strength  keep 
and  preserve  thee  to  his  glory  and  peace." 


VII 

AT   THE    COURT    OF   JAMES    THE    SECOND, 
AND  "  IN  RETIREMENT  " 

WHEN  Penn  left  the  province  in  1684,  he 
expected  to  return  speedily,  but  he  did  not 
see  that  pleasant  land  again  until  1699. 
The  fifteen  intervening  years  were  filled 
with  contention,  anxiety,  misfortune,  and 
various  distresses. 

In  the  winter  of  1684-85,  Charles  IL 
died,  and  the  Duke  of  York,  his  brother, 
succeeded  him  as  James  II.  And  James 
was  the  patron  and  good  friend  of  Wil- 
liam Penn.  But  the  king  was  a  Eoman 
-  Catholic.  One  of  his  first  acts  upon  com- 
ing to  the  throne  was  to  go  publicly  to 
mass.  He  was  privately  resolved  upon  mak- 
ing the  Eoman  Church  supreme  in  England. 
Penn  was  stoutly  opposed  to  the  king's  re- 
ligion. In  his  "  Seasonable  Caveat  against 


94  WILLIAM  PENN 

Popery,"  as  well  as  in  his  other  writings,  he 
had  expressed  his  dislike  with  characteristic 
frankness.  That  he  had  himself  been  ac- 
cused of  being  a  Jesuit  had  naturally  im- 
pelled him  to  use  the  strongest  language  to 
belie  the  accusation.  Nevertheless,  William 
Penn  stood  by  the  king.  He  sought  and 
kept  the  position  of  favorite  and  agent  of 
the  court.  He  upheld,  and  so  far  as  he 
could,  assisted,  the  projects  of  a  reign  which, 
had  it  continued,  would  probably  have  con- 
tradicted his  most  cherished  principles,  abol- 
ished liberty  of  conscience,  and  made  an  end 
of  Quakers. 

This  perplexing  inconsistency,  which  is 
the  only  serious  blot  on  Penn's  fair  fame, 
appears  to  have  been  the  result  of  two  con- 
victions. 

He  was  sure,  in  the  first  place,  of  the 
honesty  of  the  king ;  he  believed  in  him  with 
all  his  heart.  James  had  been  true  to  the 
trust  reposed  in  him  by  William's  father. 
He  had  befriended  William,  taking  him  out 
of  prison,  increasing  his  estates,  granting  his 
petitions.  "  Anybody,"  said  Penn,  "  that  has 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND      95 

the  least  pretense  to  good-nature,  gratitude, 
or  generosity,  must  needs  know  how  to  inter- 
pret my  access  to  the  king."  With  his  ad- 
vance to  the  crown  James's  graciousness  had 
increased.  He  kept  great  lords  waiting  with- 
out while  he  conversed  at  leisure  with  the 
Quaker.  He  liked  Penn,  and  Penn  liked 
him.  In  spite  of  the  disparities  in  their  age, 
rank,  and  creed,  William  Penn  and  James 
Stuart  were  fast  friends,  united  by  the  bond 
of  genuine  affection. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Penn  to  be  blind 
to  the  faults  of  his  friends.  He  brought 
great  troubles  both  upon  himself  and  upon 
his  colony  by  his  refusal  to  believe  the  re- 
ports which  were  made  to  him  against  the 
character  of  men  whom  he  had  appointed 
to  office :  he  was  unwilling  to  believe  evil  of 
any  man.  He  fell  into  bankruptcy,  and 
even  into  a  debtor's  prison,  by  his  blind,  un- 
questioning confidence  in  the  agent  who 
managed  his  business.  His  faith  in  James 
was  of  a  piece  with  his  whole  character. 
He  appears  to  have  been  temperamentally 
incapable  of  perceiving  the  unworthiness  of 
anybody  whom  he  liked. 


96  WILLIAM  PENN 

Together  with  this  conviction  as  to  the 
king's  honesty,  and  bound  up  with  it,  was  a 
like  belief  in  the  wisdom  of  the  king's  plan. 
The  king's  plan  was  to  remove  all  disabil- 
ities arising  from  religion.  He  purposed 
not  only  to  put  an  end  to  the  laws  under 
which  honest  men  were  kept  in  prison,  but 
to  abolish  the  "  tests  "  which  prevented  a 
Roman  Catholic  from  holding  office.  And, 
without  tarrying  for  the  action  of  a  cautious 
Parliament,  his  intention  was  to  do  these 
things  at  once  by  a  declaration  of  the  royal 
will.  All  this  was  approved  by  William 
Penn. 

That  the  laws  which  disturbed  Protestant 
dissenters  should  be  changed,  he  argued  at 
length  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  A  Persuasion 
to  Moderation."  Moderation,  as  he  defined 
it,  meant  "  liberty  of  conscience  to  church 
dissenters ; "  a  cause  which,  with  all  humility, 
he  said,  he  had  undertaken  to  plead  against 
the  prejudices  of  the  times.  He  maintained 
that  toleration  was  not  only  a  right  inherent 
in  religion,  but  that  it  was  for  the  political 
and  commercial  good  of  the  nation.  Eepres- 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND      97 

sion  and  persecution,  he  said,  drive  men  into 
conspiracies.  The  importing  of  religious 
distinctions  into  the  affairs  of  state  deprives 
the  country  of  the  services  of  some  of  its  best 
men.  His  father,  upon  the  occasion  of  the 
first  Dutch  war,  had  submitted  to  the  king 
a  list  of  the  ablest  sea  officers  in  the  kingdom. 
The  striking  of  the  names  of  nonconformists 
from  this  list  had  "  robbed  the  king  at  that 
time  of  ten  men,  whose  greater  knowledge 
and  valour,  than  any  other  ten  of  that  fleet, 
had,  in  their  room,  been  able  to  have  saved 
a  battle,  or  perfected  a  victory."  As  for  a 
declaration  of  indulgence,  Penn  deemed  it 
"  the  sovereign  remedy  of  the  English  con- 
stitution." 

That  the  "  tests  "  should  be  removed,  he 
urged  on  James's  behalf  upon  William  of 
Orange,  to  whom  he  went  in  Holland  on  an 
informal  commission  from  the  king.  Wil- 
liam, by  his  marriage  with  James's  daughter, 
was  heir  apparent  to  the  throne  of  England, 
and  his  consent  was  necessary  to  any  serious 
change  of  national  policy.  He  insisted  on 
the  tests.  Theoretically,  Penn  was  right. 


98  WILLIAM  PENN 

The  ideal  state  imposes  no  religious  tests  ; 
every  good  citizen,  no  matter  what  his  private 
creed  may  be,  is  eligible  to  any  office.  Prac- 
tically, Penn  was  wrong,  as  William  of  Or- 
ange plainly  saw.  That  prince,  as  appeared 
afterwards,  was  as  zealous  for  religious  free- 
dom as  was  Penn  himself;  but  it  was  plain 
to  him  that  as  matters  stood  at  that  time  in 
England,  it  was  necessary  to  enforce  the  tests 
in  order  to  prevent  the  rise  of  an  ecclesiasti- 
cal party  whose  supremacy  would  endanger 
all  that  Penn  desired.  Penn,  with  his  stout 
faith  in  the  king,  could  not  see  it.  There 
were  times,  indeed,  when  he  was  perplexed 
and  troubled.  "  The  Lord  keep  us  in  this 
dark  day ! "  he  wrote  to  his  steward  at 
Pennsbury.  "  Be  wise,  close,  respectful  to 
superiors.  The  king  has  discharged  all 
Friends  by  a  general  pardon,  and  is  courte- 
ous, though  as  to  the  Church  of  England, 
things  seem  pinching.  Several  Roman  Cath- 
olics got  much  into  places  in  the  army,  navy, 
court."  Nevertheless,  the  king's  plan,  as  he 
understood  it,  gave  assurance  of  liberty  of 
conscience,  and  the  end  of  persecution  for 
opinion's  sake  ;  and  he  supported  the  king. 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND     99 

Under  these  conditions,  misled  by  friend- 
ship, seeing,  but  not  perceiving,  Penn  per- 
suaded himself  that  he  could  excellently 
serve  God  and  his  neighbors  by  becoming  a 
courtier.  He  took  a  house  in  London,  within 
easy  distance  of  Whitehall,  and  visited  the 
king  daily.  A  great  many  people  therefore 
visited  Penn  daily;  sometimes  as  many  as 
two  hundred  were  waiting  to  confer  with  him. 
They  desired  that  he  would  do  this  or  that 
for  their  good  with  the  king.  Most  of  them 
were  Quakers ;  many  were  in  need  of  par- 
don, or  were  burdened  by  some  oppression. 

For  example,  Sir  Eobert  Stuart  of  Colt- 
ness  had  been  in  exile  as  a  Presbyterian, 
and  on  his  return  found  his  lands  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  Earl  of  Arran.  He  brought 
his  case  to  Penn.  Penn  went  to  Arran. 
"  What  is  this,  friend  James,  that  I  hear 
of  thee  ?  "  he  said.  "  Thou  hast  taken  pos- 
session of  Coltness's  castle.  Thou  knowest 
that  it  is  not  thine."  "That  estate,"  Arran 
explained,  "  I  paid  a  great  price  for.  I  re- 
ceived no  other  reward  for  my  expensive  and 
troublesome  embassy  to  France,  except  this 


100  WILLIAM  PENN 

estate."  "All  very  well,  friend  James," 
said  Penn,  "  but  of  this  assure  thyself,  that 
if  thou  dost  not  give  me  this  moment  an 
order  on  thy  chamberlain  for  two  hundred 
pounds  to  Coltness  to  carry  him  down  to  his 
native  country,  and  a  hundred  a  year  to  sub- 
sist on  till  matters  are  adjusted,  I  will  make 
it  as  many  thousands  out  of  thy  way  with 
the  king."  Arran  complied  immediately. 

Again,  one  day  after  dinner,  as  they  were 
drinking  a  glass  of  wine  together,  one  of 
Penn's  clients  said,  "  I  can  tell  you  how  you 
can  prolong  my  life."  "  I  am  no  physician," 
answered  William,  "  but  prithee  tell  me 
what  thou  meanest."  The  client  replied 
that  a  good  friend  of  his,  Jack  Trenchard, 
was  in  exile,  and  "if  you,"  he  said,  "could 
get  him  leave  to  come  home  with  safety  and 
honour,  the  drinking  now  and  then  a  bottle 
with  Jack  Trenchard  would  make  me  so 
cheerful  that  it  would  prolong  my  life." 
Penn  smilingly  promised  to  do  what  he  could, 
and  in  a  month  the  two  friends  were  drink-, 
ing  his  good  health. 

This  was  the  kind  of  business  which  he 


COURT  OF  JAMES  JTEtE  $'ES5N£     *01 

transacted.  He  had  found  a  way  to  be  of 
eminent  service  to  his  neighbors,  and  espe- 
cially to  his  Quaker  brethren,  and  he  made 
the  most  of  the  opportunity.  Ther^e  is  no 
evidence  that  he  departed  from  the  disin- 
terested life  which  he  had  previously  lived. 
He  attended  the  court  of  King  James,  as  he 
had  undertaken  the  settlement  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, not  for  what  he  could  get  out  of  it, 
but  for  the  good  he  could  do  by  means  of  it. 
What  he  did,  he  tells  us,  was  upon  a  "  prin- 
ciple of  charity."  "  I  never  accepted  any 
commission,"  he  says,  "  but  that  of  a  free 
and  common  solicitor  for  sufferers  of  all  sorts 
and  in  all  parties."  Neither  is  there  any 
instance  of  his  asking  anything  to  increase 
his  own  estate  or  position. 

Indeed,  he  was  losing  money ;  for  the  ex- 
penses of  life  at  court  were  great.  Worse 
still,  he  was  losing  his  good  name.  His 
Quaker  friends  found  him  hard  to  under- 
stand. It  was  true  that  he  had  cast  in  his 
lot  with  them,  and  had  suffered  for  their 
cause,  —  he  was  their  great  theologian  and 
preacher ;  but  he  seemed,  nevertheless,  to  be 


102  WILLIAM  PENN 

still  a  cavalier  and  a  worldly  person.  They 
heard  —  though  there  was  no  truth  in  the 
report  —  that  he  had  set  up  a  military  com- 
pany in  Pennsylvania.  They  saw  with  their 
own  eyes  that  he  lived  in  a  style  which  must 
have  seemed  to  them  altogether  inconsistent 
with  simplicity,  and  that  he  consorted  with 
courtiers.  And  they  did  not  like  it,  —  they 
said  so  frankly. 

As  for  enemies,  the  king's  favorite  had 
many,  inevitably.  The  lords  who  waited  in 
the  antechamber  while  Penn  was  closeted 
with  James  did  not  look  pleasantly  at  him 
when  he  came  out.  The  stout  Protestants, 
who  hated  the  king's  ways,  and  suspected 
the  king's  designs,  could  not  easily  think 
well  of  one  who  was  so  closely  in  his  coun- 
sels. One  of  Penn's  friends  told  him  what 
these  people  said  of  him :  Your  post  is  too 
considerable  for  a  Papist  of  an  ordinary 
form,  and  therefore  you  must  be  a  Jesuit ; 
nay,  to  confirm  that  suggestion,  it  must  be 
accompanied  with  all  the  circumstances  that 
may  best  give  it  an  air  of  probability,  —  as 
that  you  have  been  bred  at  St.  Omer's  in 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND     103 

the  Jesuit  College  ;  that  you  have  taken  or- 
ders at  Rome,  and  there  obtained  a  dispen- 
sation to  marry;  and  that  you  have  since 
then  frequently  officiated  as  a  priest  in  the 
celebration  of  the  mass,  at  Whitehall,  St. 
James's,  and  other  places."  It  seems  absurd 
enough  to  us,  but  many  intelligent  persons, 
even  Archbishop  Tillotson  of  Canterbury, 
believed  it.  The  detail  of  St.  Omer  came, 
probably,  from  a  confusion  of  the  name  with 
Saumur.  The  other  suspicions  grew  out  of 
Penn's  place  in  the  favor  of  the  king. 

It  seemed  as  if  nothing  could  prejudice 
the  king's  matters  in  the  eyes  of  Penn. 
Monmouth's  rebellion  came,  and  the  king's 
revenge  followed.  Judge  Jeffreys  went  on 
his  bloody  circuit.  "  About  three  hundred 
hanged,"  Penn  wrote,  "in  divers  towns  of 
the  west ;  about  one  thousand  to  be  trans- 
ported. I  begged  twenty  of  the  king."  It 
was  all  bad,  and  one  regrets  to  find  Penn 
concerned  in  it.  Still,  his  twenty  probably 
fared  better  than  their  neighbors.  It  is 
likely  that  he  sent  them  to  be  colonists  in 
Pennsylvania. 


104  WILLIAM  PENN 

In  the  matter  of  the  maids  of  Taunton, 
William  seems  clearly  to  have  had  no  part. 
A  company  of  little  schoolgirls,  led  by  their 
teacher,  had  marched  in  procession  to  cele- 
brate the  landing  of  Monmouth.  For  this 
offense  their  parents  were  heavily  fined,  and 
the  fines  were  given  to  the  queen's  maids 
of  honor.  These  ladies  wrote  to  a  "Mr. 
Penne  "  to  get  him  to  collect  them.  Macau- 
lay  thought  that  this  pardon-broker  was 
William  Penn.  It  is  flagrantly  inconsistent 
with  his  character,  and  he  has  been  ade- 
quately vindicated  by  various  writers.  The 
agent  in  this  case  was  probably  George 
Penne,  a  person  in  that  business. 

Penn's  course  is  not  so  clear  in  the 
matter  of  the  presidency  of  Magdalen  Col- 
lege. One  of  the  steps  in  James's  plan  to 
change  the  religion  of  England  was  to  get  a 
foothold  for  teachers  of  his  faith  at  the  uni- 
versities. He  intended  to  capture  Oxford 
and  Cambridge.  He  had  so  far  succeeded  at 
Oxford  as  to  get  possession  of  Christ  Church 
and  University  College,  and,  the  presidency 
of  Magdalen  falling  vacant,  he  ordered  the 


COURT  OF  JAMES   THE  SECOND    105 

fellows  to  elect  a  man  of  his  own  choice. 
The  fellows  refused  to  obey  the  order,  — 
thereupon  Penn,  who  had  at  first  taken 
their  part  with  the  king,  advised  them  to 
surrender.  "  Mr.  Penn,"  said  Dr.  Hough, 
representing  the  fellows,  "  in  this  I  will  be 
plain  with  you.  We  have  our  statutes 
and  oaths  to  justify  us  in  all  that  we  have 
done  hitherto ;  but,  setting  this  aside,  we 
have  a  religion  to  defend,  and  I  suppose 
yourself  would  think  us  knaves  if  we  would 
tamely  give  it  up.  The  Papists  have  al- 
ready gotten  Christ  Church  and  University ; 
the  present  struggle  is  for  Magdalen;  and 
in  a  short  time  they  threaten  they  will  have 
the  rest." 

To  this  Penn  replied  with  vehemence : 
"That  they  shall  never  have,  assure  your- 
selves ;  if  once  they  proceed  so  far  they  will 
quickly  find  themselves  destitute  of  their 
present  assistance.  For  my  part,  I  have  al- 
ways declared  my  opinion  that  the  prefer- 
ments of  the  Church  should  not  be  put  into 
any  other  hands  but  such  as  they  are  at 
present  in ;  but  I  hope  you  would  not  have 


106  WILLIAM  PENN 

the  two  universities  such  invincible  bul- 
warks for  the  Church  of  England,  that  none 
but  they  must  be  capable  of  giving  their 
children  a  learned  education.  I  suppose 
two  or  three  colleges  will  content  the  Pa- 
pists." Finally,  the  king's  men  broke  down 
the  doors,  turned  out  the  professors  and  stu- 
dents, and  gave  the  king  his  way.  Penn 
was  thus  the  agent  of  tyranny ;  but  he  was 
an  innocent  agent.  He  made  a  bad  blun- 
der ;  but  he  made  it  honestly  and  ignorantly. 
It  was  in  accord  with  his  democratic  ideas 
that  the  universities  should  be  places  of  in- 
struction for  all  the  people ;  he  would  have 
liked  to  see  not  only  the  Roman  Catholics, 
but  all  the  great  divisions  of  religion  in 
England  represented  there.  And  that  fine 
idea  misled  him.  To  hold  him  guilty,  here 
or  elsewhere,  of  malice  or  hypocrisy,  is  to 
misread  his  character.  He  was  simply  mis- 
taken, —  mistaken  in  the  king,  mistaken  in 
the  application  of  his  own  principles. 

Meanwhile,  the  nation  at  large  was  mak- 
ing no  mistake.  The  people  saw  James  as 
he  was,  and  detected  his  designs  upon  the 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND    107 

liberties  of  England.  At  last,  in  April, 
1688,  he  issued  a  Declaration  of  Indulgence. 
He  added  insult  to  injury  by  ordering  that 
it  should  be  read  in  every  church  in  the 
realm.  The  seven  bishops  who  protested 
were  sent  to  the  Tower.  Then  the  end 
came  with  speed.  William  of  Orange  was 
invited  into  England.  The  nation  welcomed 
him  with  acclamations.  James  fled  before 
him  into  France,  where  he  lived  the  remain- 
der of  an  inglorious  life. 

This  was  a  hard  change  for  William  Penn, 
and  he  seems  to  have  done  nothing  to  make 
it  easier.  There  were  courtiers  who  passed 
with  incredible  swiftness  from  one  allegiance 
to  the  other ;  he  was  not  among  them.  Oth- 
ers fled  to  France,  but  he  stayed.  He  was 
arrested.  In  his  examination  before  the 
Privy  Council  he  declared  that  he  "had 
done  nothing  but  what  he  could  answer  for 
before  God  and  all  the  princes  in  the  world ; 
that  he  loved  his  country  and  the  Protestant 
religion  above  his  life,  and  had  never  acted 
against  either ;  that  all  he  had  ever  aimed 
at  in  his  public  endeavors  was  none  other 


108  WILLIAM  PENN 

than  what  the  king  had  declared  for  [reli- 
gious liberty]  ;  that  King  James  had  always 
been  his  friend,  and  his  father's  friend,  and 
that  in  gratitude  he  himself  was  the  king's, 
and  did  ever,  as  much  as  in  him  lay,  influ- 
ence him  to  his  true  interest."  Penn  was 
released. 

The  new  king  began  his  reign  with  the 
Toleration  Act,  which  Parliament  passed  in 
1688,  and  from  which  dates  the  establish- 
ment of  actual  and  abiding  religious  liberty 
in  England.  Thus  Penn's  great  purpose 
was  accomplished  by  one  with  whom  he  was 
not  in  accord.  Sometimes  a  political  party 
adopts  the  projects  for  which  its  opponents 
have  long  labored,  and  carries  them  out  even 
more  vigorously  than  they  had  been  planned 
originally.  The  initial  reformers  are  glad 
that  their  ideals  have  been  realized,  but 
their  zeal  must  be  uncommonly  impersonal 
if  the  success  brings  them  quite  so  much  joy 
as  it  logically  ought.  It  is  not  likely  that 
the  Toleration  Act  filled  the  soul  of  William 
Penn  with  great  jubilation.  Indeed,  we 
know  that  he  insisted  to  the  end  of  his  life 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND     109 

that  James,  if  he  had  been  let  alone,  would 
have  done  all  that  William  did,  and  more 
too,  and  better. 

The  years  which  followed  were  full  of 
trouble.  Macaulay  says  that  in  1689  Penn 
was  plotting  against  the  government;  but 
the  evidence  does  not  suffice  to  establish 
the  fact.  The  Privy  Council,  in  1690,  con- 
fronted Penn  with  an  intercepted  letter  to 
him  from  James,  asking  for  help.  But,  as 
Penn  said,  he  could  not  hinder  the  king 
from  writing  to  him.  He  added,  however, 
with  characteristic  boldness,  that  since  he 
had  loved  King  James  in  his  prosperity  he 
should  not  hate  him  in  his  adversity.  He 
was  again  discharged. 

In  that  same  year,  however,  James  in- 
vaded Ireland,  and  the  situation  of  his 
friends  in  England  was  thereby  made  in- 
creasingly difficult.  Penn  was  arrested  with 
others,  and  in  prison  awaited  trial  for  sev- 
eral months.  The  result  was  as  before,  — 
he  was  found  in  no  offense.  But  before  a 
month  had  passed,  he  learned  that  another 
warrant  was  out  against  his  liberty.  Offi- 


110  WILLIAM  PENN 

cers  went  to  take  him  at  the  funeral  of 
George  Fox,  but  arrived  too  late*  By  this 
time  he  had  concluded  that  the  path  of  pru- 
dence was  that  which  led  into  a  wise  retire- 
ment. He  hid  himself  for  the  space  of 
three  years.  He  was  publicly  proclaimed  a 
traitor,  and  was  deprived  of  the  government 
of  his  colony.  He  was  "  hunted  up  and 
down,"  he  says,  "  and  could  never  be  allowed 
to  live  quietly  in  city  or  country." 

Finally,  the  government  were  persuaded 
either  that  Penn  was  innocent,  or  that  no 
further  danger  was  to  be  apprehended  from 
him,  and  several  noblemen,  interceding  with 
the  king,  procured  his  pardon.  They  repre- 
sented his  case,  he  says,  as  not  only  hard, 
but  oppressive,  there  being  no  evidence  but 
what  "  impostors,  or  those  that  fled,  or  that 
have  since  their  pardon  refused  to  verify 
(and  asked  me  pardon  for  saying  what  they 
did)  alleged  against  me."  The  king  an- 
nounced that  Penn  was  his  old  acquaint- 
ance, and  that  he  might  follow  his  business 
as  freely  as  ever,  and  that  for  his  part  he 
had  nothing  to  say  to  him. 


COURT  OF  JAMES  THE  SECOND     111 

Thus  again,  and  at  last,  the  political  ac- 
cusations against  William  Penn  came  to 
nothing.  He  had  been  in  a  hard  position  as 
the  faithful  friend  of  a  dethroned  monarch 
in  a  day  when  conspiracies  were  being  made 
on  every  hand.  That  he  should  have  been 
suspected  of  treason  was  inevitable.  That 
in  his  unconcealed  affection  for  James  and 
disapproval  of  William  he  said  imprudent 
things  is  likely  enough.  Prudence  was  not 
one  of  his  virtues.  He  was  never  calculat- 
ingly  careful  of  his  own  welfare.  But  that 
he  was  ever  untrue  to  William,  or  did  any 
act,  or  consented  to  any,  which  could  rea- 
sonably be  called  treacherous,  is  not  only 
quite  unproved,  but  is  out  of  accord  with 
the  true  William  Penn  as  he  is  revealed  in 
his  writings  and  in  all  his  life.  The  only 
faidt  which  has  been  clearly  established 
against  him  is  that  of  liking  James  better 
than  he  liked  William.  He  was  a  stanch 
friend  to  his  friend ;  that  is  the  sum  of  his 
offending,  wherein  the  only  serious  regret  is 
that  his  friend  was  not  more  worthy  of  his 
steadfast  and  unselfish  friendship.  "At  no 


112  WILLIAM  PENN 

time  in  his  life,"  says  Mr.  Fiske,  "  does  he 
seem  more  honest,  brave,  and  lovable,  than 
during  the  years,  so  full  of  trouble  for  him, 
that  intervened  between  the  accession  of 
James  and  the  accession  of  Anne." 


VIII 

PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  TO  THE  PROVINCE  : 
CLOSING  YEARS 

THE  thoughts  with  which  Penn's  mind 
was  occupied  during  the  years  of  hiding  ap- 
pear in  his -book,  "  Some  Fruits  of  Solitude." 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  found  a  copy  of  it 
in  a  book-shop  in  San  Francisco,  and  carried 
it  in  his  pocket  many  days,  reading  it  in 
street-cars  and  ferry-boats.  He  found  it,  he 
says,  "in  all  places  a  peaceful  and  sweet 
companion ; "  and  he  adds,  "  there  is  not  a 
man  living,  no,  nor  recently  dead,  that  could 
put,  with  so  lovely  a  spirit,  so  much  honest, 
kind  wisdom  into  words." 

"  The  author  blesseth  God  for  his  retire- 
ment," so  the  book  begins,  "  and  kisses  the 
gentle  hand  which  led  him  into  it;  for 
though  it  should  prove  barren  to  the  world, 
it  can  never  do  so  to  him.  He  has  now  had 
some  time  he  can  call  his  own ;  a  property 


114  WILLIAM  PENN 

he  was  never  so  much  master  of  before ;  in 
which  he  has  taken  a  view  of  himself  and 
the  world,  and  observed  wherein  he  hath  hit 
and  missed  the  mark.  And  he  verily  thinks, 
were  he  to  live  his  life  over  again,  he  could 
not  only,  with  God's  grace,  serve  him,  but 
his  neighbor  and  himself,  better  than  he 
hath  done,  and  have  seven  years  of  his  life 
to  spare." 

x*  Government  and  Religion  have  the  lon- 
gest chapters  in  this  volume  of  reflections, 
as  being  the  matters  in  which  William  was 
most  interested.  "  Happy  that  king,"  he 
says,  "  who  is  great  by  justice,  and  that  peo- 
ple who  are  free  by  obedience."  "  Where 
example  keeps  pace  with  authority,  power 
hardly  fails  to  be  obeyed,  and  magistrates 
to  be  honoured."  "Let  the  people  think 
they  govern,  and  they  will  be  governed." 
"  Religion  is  the  fear  of  God,  and  its  demon- 
stration good  works ;  and  faith  is  the  root 
of  both."  «  To  be  like  Christ,  then,  is  to  be 
a  Christian."  "  Some  folk  think  they  may 
scold,  rail,  hate,  rob,  and  kill  too  :  so  it  be  but 
for  God's  sake.  But  nothing  in  us,  unlike 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  115 

him,  can  please  him."  So  the  book  goes, 
page  after  page,  always  serious  and  sensible, 
full  of  simplicity  and  kindliness,  cheerful 
and  brotherly  and  unfailingly  religious.  It 
is  the  work  of  one  who  is  trying  his  best  to 
live  for  his  brethren  and  in  Christ's  spirit. 

Another  significant  writing  of  this  period 
is  Penn's  "  Plan  for  the  Peace  of  Europe." 
The  calamities  of  the  war  then  in  progress 
on  the  Continent  gave  him  arguments  enough 
for  the  desirableness  of  peace.  The  means 
of  peace  is  justice,  and  the  means  of  justice 
is  government.  It  is  plain  to  all  that  a  state 
wherein  any  private  citizen  might  avenge 
himself  upon  his  neighbor  would  be  a  place 
of  confusion  and  distress.  "  For  this  cause 
they  have  sessions,  terms,  assizes,  and  parlia- 
ments, to  overrule  men's  passions  and  re- 
sentments, that  they  may  not  be  judges  in 
their  own  cause,  nor  punishers  of  their  own 
wrongs."  Penn  proposes  that  the  same  rela- 
tion between  peace  and  justice  which  is  en- 
forced between  citizen  and  citizen  be  also 
enforced  between  nation  and  nation.  "  Now," 
he  says, "  if  the  sovereign  princes  of  Europe 


116  WILLIAM  PENN 

...  for  love  of  peace  and  order  [would] 
agree  to  meet  by  their  stated  deputies  in  a 
general  Diet,  Estates  or  Parliament  and 
there  establish  rules  of  justice  for  sovereign 
princes  to  observe  one  to  another ;  and  thus 
to  meet  yearly,  or  once  in  two  or  three  years 
at  the  farthest,  or  as  they  shall  see  cause, 
and  to  be  stiled,  The  Sovereign  or  Imperial 
Diet,  Parliament  or  State  of  Europe :  be- 
fore which  Sovereign  Assembly  should  be 
brought  all  differences  depending  between 
one  sovereign  and  another  that  cannot  be 
made  up  by  private  embassies  before  the 
sessions  begin ;  and  that  if  any  of  the  sover- 
eignties that  constitute  these  imperial  states 
shall  refuse  to  submit  their  claim  or  preten- 
sions to  them,  or  to  abide  and  perform  the 
judgment  thereof  and  seek  their  remedy  by 
arms,  or  delay  their  compliance  beyond  the 
time  prefixt  in  their  resolutions,  all  the  other 
sovereignties,  united  as  one  strength,  shall 
compel  the  submission  and  performance  of 
the  sentence,  with  damages  to  the  suffering 
party,  and  charges  to  the  sovereignties  that 
obliged  their  submission  ; .  .  .  peace  would  be 


PENH'S  SECOND  VISIT  117 

procured  and  continued  in  Europe."  The 
principle  of  international  arbitration,  the 
Conference  at  the  Hague,  and  all  like  meet- 
ings which  shall  be  held  hereafter,  are  thus 
foreshadowed. 

These  two  productions  of  Penn's  season 
of  retirement  —  the  "Fruits  of  Solitude," 
and  the  "  Plan  for  the  Peace  of  Europe  " 
illustrate  again  the  two  qualities  which  make 
him  singularly  eminent  among  the  founders 
of  commonwealths.  He  was  at  once  a  phi- 
losopher and  a  statesman ;  he  was  interested 
alike  in  religion  and  in  politics.  There  have 
been  many  politicians  to  whom  religion  has 
been  of  no  concern.  There  have  been  many 
religious  persons  in  high  positions  who  have 
been  so  shut  in  by  church  walls  that  they 
have  been  incapable  of  a  wider  outlook; 
they  have  accordingly  been  narrow,  preju- 
diced, and  often  unpractical  people  ;  they 
have  been  blind  to  the  elemental  social  fact 
of  difference ;  they  have  hated  the  thought 
of  toleration.  Penn  was  almost  alone  among 
the  good  men  of  our  era  of  colonization  in 
being  at  the  same  time  a  man  of  the  world 
•  and  a  man  of  the  other  world. 


118  WILLIAM  PENN 

Penn  came  out  of  his  exile  in  1693  bur- 
dened with  misfortune.  He  had  been  de- 
prived of  his  government ;  he  was  sadly  in 
debt ;  he  had  lost  many  of  his  friends.  His 
colonists  in  Pennsylvania  declined  to  lend 
him  money.  His  brethren  in  England  drew 
up  a  confession  of  wrong-doing  for  him  to 
sign  :  "  If  in  any  things  during  those  late 
revolutions  I  have  concerned  myself  either 
by  words  or  writings,  in  love,  pity  or  good 
will  to  any  in  distress  [meaning  the  king] 
further  than  consisted  with  Truth's  honor  or 
the  Church's  peace,  I  am  sorry  for  it."  But 
he  would  not  sign.  To  these  troubles  was 
added  a  greater  grief  in  the  death  of  his 
wife.  "  An  excellent  wife  and  mother,"  he 
said  of  her,  "  an  entire  and  constant  friend, 
of  a  more  than  common  capacity,  and  greater 
modesty  and  humility ;  yet  most  equal  and 
undaunted  in  danger."  A  brave  soul,  no 
doubt,  as  befitted  her  parentage,  and  of  a 
devout  and  consecrated  spirit. 

But  William  was  ever  of  a  serene  and 
cheerful  disposition.  Neither  loss,  nor  dis- 
appointment, nor  bereavement  could  shut 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  119 

out  the  sun.  His  religious  faith  strength- 
ened him.  "  We  must  needs  disorder  our- 
selves," he  had  written  in  his  "  Fruits  of  Soli- 
tude," "  if  we  only  look  at  our  losses.  But 
if  we  consider  how  little  we  deserve  what  is 
left,  our  passions  will  cool,  and  our  murmurs 
will  turn  into  thankfulness."  "  Though  our 
Saviour's  passion  is  over,  his  compassion  is 
not.  That  never  fails  his  humble,  sincere 
disciples ;  in  him  they  find  more  than  all 
that  they  lose  in  the  world." 

During  the  six  years  which  followed,  this 
strong  confidence  was  justified.  He  regained 
his  government  and  his  good  name.  He 
also  married  a  second  wife,  Hannah  Callow- 
hill,  a  strong,  sensible,  and  estimable  Quaker 
lady  of  some  means,  living  in  Bristol. 

The  only  satisfactory  information  as  to  the 
personal  appearance  of  Penn  in  mature  life 
is  that  which  is  given  by  Sylvanus  Be  van. 
Be  van  was  a  Quaker  apothecary  in  London, 
who  had  a  remarkable  gift  for  carving  por- 
traits in  ivory.  After  Penn's  death,  he 
made  such  a  portrait  of  him  from  memory. 
The  men  who  had  known  William  liked  it 


120  WILLIAM  PENN 

greatly.  Lord  Cobham,  to  whom  Bevan 
sent  it,  said,  "  It  is  William  Perm  himself." 
It  represents  him  in  a  curled  wig,  with  full 
cheeks  and  a  double  chin  —  a  pleasant,  mas- 
terful, and  serious  person.  Clarkson  says 
that  in  his  attire  he  was  "  very  neat,  though 
plain."  Penn  advised  his  children  to  choose 
clothes  "neither  unshapely  nor  fantastical ;  " 
and  he  illustrated  to  King  James  the  differ- 
ence between  the  Roman  Catholic  and  the 
Quaker  religions  by  the  difference  between 
his  hat  and  the  king's.  "  The  only  differ- 
ence," he  said,  "lies  in  the  ornaments  that 
have  been  added  to  thine."  His  dress  was 
probably  that  which  was  common  to  gentle- 
men in  his  day,  but  without  extremes  of 
color  or  adornment.  For  some  time  after 
becoming  a  Quaker  he  wore  his  sword,  hav- 
ing consulted  Fox,  who  said,  "  I  advise  thee 
to  wear  it  as  long  as  thou  canst."  Presently 
Fox,  seeing  him  without  it,  said,  "  William, 
where  is  thy  sword  ?  "  To  which  Penn  re- 
plied, "  I  have  taken  thy  advice :  I  wore  it 
as  long  as  I  could." 

The  sober  cheerfulness  of   Penn's  attire 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  121 

comported  well  with  his  conversation.  It  is 
true  that  Bishop  Burnet,  who  did  not  like 
him,  says  that  "  he  had  a  tedious,  luscious 
way  of  talking,  not  apt  to  overcome  a  man's 
reason,  though  it  might  tire  his  patience." 
But  Dean  Swift  enjoyed  him,  and  testified 
that  "  he  talked  very  agreeably  and  with 
great  spirit."  The  Friends  of  Heading 
Meeting  even  noted  that  he  was  "  facetious 
in  conversation,"  and  there  is  a  tradition  of 
a  venerable  Friend  who  spoke  of  him  "  as 
having  naturally  an  excess  of  levity  of  spirit 
for  a  grave  minister."  A  handsome,  grace- 
ful, and  even  a  merry  gentleman  it  was  who 
married  Hannah  Callowhill. 

For  a  time  he  devoted  himself  again  to 
the  work  of  the  ministry.  He  went  about, 
as  in  former  days,  preaching,  sometimes  in 
the  market-hall,  sometimes  in  the  fields. 
Once,  in  Ireland,  the  bishop  sent  an  officer 
to  disperse  the  meeting,  complaining  that 
Penn  had  left  him  "  nobody  to  preach  to  but 
the  mayor,  church-wardens,  a  few  of  the  con- 
stables, and  the  bare  walls." 

His  heart,  however,  was  in  his  province. 


122  WILLIAM  PENN 

The  affairs  of  Pennsylvania  had  been  going 
badly.  There  had  been  a  hot  contention 
between  the  council  and  the  assembly,  and 
another  between  the  province  and  the  terri- 
tory. The  officials,  too,  whom  Penn  had 
appointed,  had  quarreled  among  themselves. 
William  complained  that  they  were  exces- 
sively "  governmentish ;  "  meaning  that  they 
liked  authority  and  that  they  took  details 
very  seriously.  The  situation,  however,  was 
inevitably  difficult.  In  his  relation  to  the 
king,  the  governor  was  a  feudal  sovereign ; 
in  his  relation  to  the  people  he  was,  by 
Penn's  arrangement,  the  executive  of  a  de- 
mocracy. Penn  himself  reconciled  the  two 
positions  by  his  own  tact  and  unselfishness, 
as  well  as  by  a  certain  masterfulness  to 
which  those  about  him  instinctively  and 
willingly  yielded.  He  proved  the  motto  of 
his  book-plate,  Dum  Clavum  Teneam;  all 
went  well  while  he  with  his  own  hands  held 
the  helm.  But  his  deputies  were  not  so 
competent.  The  colony  fell  into  two  parties, 
the  proprietary  and  the  popular,  represent- 
ing these  two  ideas.  Then  the  governor 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  123 

whom  the  king  had  appointed  during  Penn's 
retirement  was  a  soldier,  and  his  un-Quaker- 
like  notions  as  to  the  right  conduct  of  a 
colony  brought  a  new  element  of  confusion 
into  affairs  which  were  already  sufficiently 
confounded. 

At  last,  in  1699,  it  became  possible  for 
the  founder  to  make  another  visit  to  his  pro- 
vince. He  brought  his  family  with  him, 
evidently  intending  to  stay.  Philadelphia 
was  now  a  city  of  some  seven  hundred 
houses,  and  had  nearly  seven  thousand  in- 
habitants. The  people  were  at  that  moment 
in  deep  depression,  having  just  been  visited 
with  a  plague  of  yellow  fever.  The  pestilence, 
however,  had  abated,  and  Penn  was  received 
with  sober  rejoicings.  He  took  up  his  resi- 
dence in  the  "  slate-roof  house,"  a  modest 
mansion  which  stood  on  the  corner  of  Second 
Street  and  Norris  Alley;  it  was  pulled  down 
in  1867. 

Now  began  a  season  of  good  government. 
The  business  of  piracy  had  for  some  time 
been  merrily  carried  on  by  various  enter- 
prising persons,  some  of  whom  lived  very 


124  WILLIAM  PENN 

respectably  in  Philadelphia.  William  put  a 
stop  to  it.  The  importing  of  slaves  from 
Africa  was  at  that  time  considered  by  most 
persons  to  be  a  good  thing  both  for  the 
planters  and  for  the  slaves.  Already,  how- 
ever, at  the  Pennsylvania  yearly  meeting  of 
Friends  in  1688,  some  who  came  from  Krie- 
sheim,  in  Germany,  had  protested  against  it, 

"  Who  first  of  all  their  testimonial  gave 
Against  the  oppressor,  for  the  outcast  slave." 

And,  in  consequence,  though  slaves  were 
still  imported,  they  were  humanely  treated. 
Penn  interested  himself  in  the  improvement 
of  their  condition.  He  was  also  concerned 
in  the  progress  of  the  prison  reforms  which 
he  had  proposed  in  the  original  establish- 
ment of  the  colony.  He  employed  a  watch- 
man to  cry  the  news,  the  weather,  and  the 
time  of  day  in  the  Philadelphia  streets.  Re- 
garding the  Constitution,  about  which  there 
had  been  so  much  contention,  he  addressed 
the  council  and  the  assembly  in  terms  of 
characteristic  friendliness.  "  Friends,"  he 
said,  "  if  in  the  Constitution  by  charter 
there  be  anything  that  jars,  alter  it.  If  you 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  125 

want  a  law  for  this  or  that,  prepare  it."  He 
advised  them,  however,  not  to  trifle  with 
government,  and  wished  there  were  no  need 
to  have  any  government  at  all.  In  general, 
he  said,  the  fewer  laws,  the  better.  The  re- 
sult was  a  new  Constitution.  It  provided 
that  the  council  should  be  appointed  by  the 
governor,  and  that  the  assembly  should  have 
the  right  to  originate  laws.  It  was  more 
simple  and  workable  than  the  previous  legis- 
lation, and  lasted  until  the  Revolution. 

Meanwhile,  Penn  was  journeying  about 
the  country  in  his  old  way,  preaching.  At 
Merion,  a  small  boy  of  the  family  where  he 
was  entertained,  being  much  impressed  with 
the  great  man's  looks  and  speech,  peeped 
through  the  latchet-hole  of  his  chamber  door, 
and  both  saw  and  heard  him  at  his  prayers. 
Near  Haverford,  a  small  girl,  walking  along 
the  country  road,  was  overtaken  by  the  gov- 
ernor, who  took  her  up  behind  him  on  his 
horse,  and  so  carried  her  on  her  way,  her 
bare  feet  dangling  by  the  horse's  side. 

Clarkson,  the  chief  of  the  biographers  of 
Penn,  who  collected  these  and  other  inci- 


126  WILLIAM  PENN 

dents,  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  him  as  he  ap- 
peared at  this  time  at  Quaker  meetings. 
"  He  was  of  such  humility  that  he  used  gen- 
erally to  sit  at  the  lowest  end  of  the  space 
allotted  to  ministers,  always  taking  care  to 
place  above  himself  poor  ministers,  and  those 
who  appeared  to  him  to  be  peculiarly  gifted." 
He  liked  to  encourage  young  men  to  speak. 
When  he  himself  spoke,  it  was  in  the  sim- 
plest words,  easy  to  be  understood,  and  with 
many  homely  illustrations.  At  the  same 
time,  on  state  occasions,  as  the  proprietor  of 
Pennsylvania  and  representative  of  the  sov- 
ereign, he  used  some  ceremony,  marching 
through  the  Philadelphia  streets  to  the 
opening  of  the  assembly  with  a  mace-bearer 
before  him,  and  having  an  officer  standing 
at  his  gate  on  audience  days,  with  a  long 
staff  tipped  with  silver.  Acquainted  with 
affairs,  and  with  a  knowledge  of  the  rela- 
tions between  government  and  human  ira- 
ture  drawn  from  a  wide  experience,  he  knew 
the  distinction,  at  which  some  of  his  Quaker 
brethren  stumbled,  between  personal  humil- 
ity and  the  proper  dignity  of  official  station. 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  127 

-  In  the  intervals  left  him  by  the  demands 
of  church  and  state,  he  busied  himself  with 
the  improvement  of  his  place  at  Pennsbury. 
Here  he  had  a  considerable  house  in  the 
midst  of  pleasant  gardens.  He  took  great 
pleasure  in  personal  superintendence  of  the 
grounds  and  buildings,  planting  vines  and 
cutting  vistas  through  the  trees.  "The 
country  is  to  be  preferred,"  he  wrote  in 
"  Fruits  of  Solitude."  "  The  country  is  both 
the  philosopher's  garden  and  library,  in 
which  he  reads  and  contemplates  the  power, 
wisdom,  and  goodness  of  God."  "  The  know- 
ledge and  improvement  of  it,"  he  declared, 
is  "  man's  oldest  business  and  trade,  and  the 
best  he  can  be  of." 

Within  were  silver  plate  and  satin  cur- 
tains, and  embroidered  chairs  and  couches. 
The  proprietor's  bed  was  covered  with  a 
"quilt  of  white  Holland  quilted  in  green 
silk  by  Letitia,"  his  daughter.  "  Send  up," 
he  writes  to  James  Logan,  at  Philadelphia, 
"our  great  stewpan  and  cover,  and  little 
soup  dish,  and  two  or  three  pounds  of  coffee 
if  sold  in  town,  and  three  pounds  of  wicks 


128  WILLIAM  PENN 

ready  for  candles."  Mrs.  Penn  asks  Logan 
to  provide  "  candlesticks,  and  great  candles, 
some  green  ones,  and  pewter  and  earthen 
basins,  mops,  salts,  looking-glass,  a  piece 
of  dried  beef,  and  a  firkin  or  two  of  good 
butter." 

Penn  rode  a  large  white  horse,  and  had  a 
coach,  with  a  black  man  to  drive  it,  and  a 
"  rattling  leathern  conveniency,"  probably 
smaller,  and  a  sedan  chair  for  Mrs.  Penn. 
In  the  river  lay  the  barge,  of  which  William 
was  so  fond  that  he  wrote  from  England  to 
charge  that  it  be  carefully  looked  after. 
Somebody  expressed  surprise  one  day  when 
Penn  went  out  in  it  against  wind  and  tide. 
"  I  have  been  sailing  all  my  life  against  wind 
and  tide,"  he  said. 

Much  of  the  work  of  the  estate  was  done 
by  slaves.  (  The  fact  troubled  the  proprietor's 
conscience^  He  laid  it  upon  his  own  soul,  as 
he  did  upon  the  souls  of  his  brethren  in  the 
colony,  "  to  be  very  careful  in  discharging  a 
good  conscience  towards  them  in  all  respects, 
but  more  especially  for  the  good  of  their 
souls,  that  they  might,  as  frequent  as  may 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  129 

be,  come  to  meeting  on  first-days."  A  spe- 
cial meeting  was  appointed  for  slaves  once 
a  month,  and  their  masters  were  expected 
to  come  with  them.  'Finally,  Penn  liberated 
all  his  slaves?.  In  his  will  of  1701,  "  I  give," 
he  says,  "  to  my  blacks  their  freedom,  as  is 
under  my  hand  already,  and  to  old  Sam  100 
acres,  to  be  his  children's  after  he  and  his 
wife  are  dead,  forever." 

The  Pennsbury  house  had  a  great  hall  in 
the  midst,  where  the  governor  in  an  oak  arm- 
chair received  his  neighbors,  the  Indians. 
Here  they  came,  in  paint  and  feathers,  — 
"  Connoondaghtoh,  king  of  the  Susquehan- 
nah  Indians ;  Wopaththa,  king  of  the  Shawa- 
nese;  Weewinjough,  chief  of  the  Ganawese; 
and  Ahookassong,  brother  of  the  emperor  of 
the  five  nations ; "  and  many  other  hum- 
bler braves.  John  Richardson,  a  Yorkshire 
Quaker,  visited  Penn  at  Pennsbury  and  saw 
them.  William  gave  them  match-coats,  he 
says,  and  "  some  other  things,"  including  a 
reasonable  supply  of  rum,  which  the  chiefs 
dispensed  to  the  warriors  severally  in  small 
portions :  "  So  they  came  quietly,  and  in  a 


130  WILLIAM  PENN 

solid  manner,  and  took  their  draws."  He 
did  not  smoke,  a  fact  which  the  Indians  must 
have  noted  as  a  curious  eccentricity.  Then 
they  made  a  small  fire  out  of  doors,  and  the 
men  sat  about  it  in  a  ring,  singing  "  a  very 
melodious  hymn,"  beating  the  ground  be- 
tween the  verses  with  short  sticks,  and,  after 
a  circling  dance,  departed.  Penn  got  on 
most  happily  with  the  Indians.  The  peace- 
ful Quakers  went  about  unarmed  and  were 
never  in  danger.  The  only  disorderly  folk 
thereabout  were  white  men. 

In  the  midst  of  these  rural  joys,  news  came 
that  a  movement  was  on  foot  to  put  an  end 
to  proprietary  governments,  thereby  bringing 
all  colonies  under  the  immediate  control  of 
the  crown.  Penn  felt  that  it  was  necessary 
for  him  to  return  to  England  to  block  this 
inconvenient  legislation.  On  the  28th  of 
October,  he  assembled  the  citizens  of  Phila- 
delphia, and  presented  them  with  a  charter 
for  their  city.  In  the  Friends'  meeting,  he 
said  that  he  "  looked  over  all  infirmities  and 
outwards,  and  had  an  eye  to  the  regions  of 
the  spirit,  wherein  was  our  sweetest  tie." 


PENN'S  SECOND  VISIT  131 

Then,  says  Norris,  "  in  true  love  lie  took  his 
leave  of  us."  Thus,  after  two  years  wherein 
peace  and  quietness  prevailed  over  all  mis- 
understanding and  opposition,  he  set  sail  in 
1701,  and  never  saw  Pennsylvania  again. 

His  house  at  Pennsbury  fell  into  ruins,  — 
due  in  large  part  to  the  leakage  of  a  leaden 
reservoir  on  the  roof,  —  and  was  taken  down 
before  the  Revolution.  The  furniture  was 
gradually  dispersed.  For  some  years  it  was 
"  deemed  a  kind  of  pious  stealth,"  among 
those  who  were  most  loyal  to  the  proprietor, 
to  carry  away  something  out  of  the  house 
when  they  chanced  to  visit  its  empty  halls. 
One  gentleman  rejoiced  hi  the  possession 
of  the  mantelpiece;  another  had  a  pair  of 
Penn's  plush  breeches. 

William  Penn's  four  years  of  actual  resi- 
dence gave  him  all  the  satisfaction  which  he 
ever  got  from  his  colonial  possessions.  All 
else  was  worry,  labor,  and  expense.  The 
province  was  a  sore  financial  burden.  As 
proprietor  he  was  charged  with  the  payment, 
in  large  part,  of  the  expenses  of  government. 
The  returns  from  rents  and  sales  were  slow 


132  WILLIAM  PENN 

and  uncertain.  The  taxes  on  imports  and 
exports,  to  which  he  had  a  charter  right,  he 
had  generously  declined.  When  he  asked 
the  assembly,  in  remembrance  of  that  liber- 
ality, to  send  him  money  in  his  financial 
straits,  they  were  not  minded  to  respond. 
Penn  belonged  to  that  high  fraternity  of 
noble  souls  who  do  not  know  how  to  make 
bargains.  His  impulses  were  generous  to  a 
fault,  and  he  had  an  invincible  confidence 
that  his  neighbors  would  deal  with  him  in 
the  same  spirit.  The  consequence  was  that 
year  by  year  the  expenses  grew,  and  there 
was  but  a  slender  income.  "  O  Pennsyl- 
vania," he  cries,  "  what  hast  thou  cost  me  ? 
Above  thirty  thousand  pounds  more  than  I 
ever  got  by  it ;  two  hazardous  and  most 
fatiguing  voyages,  my  straits  and  slavery 
here,  and  my  child's  soul,  almost." 

The  last  allusion  is  to  Guli's  son,  William, 
whose  dissipation  Penn  always  attributed  to 
a  lack  of  fatherly  care  during  his  first  visit 
to  the  province.  Penn  finally  sent  the  boy 
to  Pennsbury,  hoping  that  the  quiet,  the  ab- 
sence of  temptation,  and  the  wholesome  joys 


CLOSING  YEARS  133 

of  a  country  life,  might  amend  him.  But 
William  went  from  bad  to  worse,  was  ar- 
rested in  Philadelphia  in  a  tavern  brawl,  was 
formally  excommunicated  by  the  Quakers, 
and  came  home  to  England  to  give  his 
father  further  pain. 

To  the  financial  burdens  of  the  province 
were  added  the  difficulties  of  government. 
Penn  succeeded  very  well  in  keeping  his 
colony,  —  he  defended  his  boundaries  against 
Lord  Baltimore,  and  he  defeated  those  who 
would  have  taken  away  his  rule  and  given 
it  to  the  king ;  but  the  governing  of  the  col- 
ony across  three  thousand  miles  of  sea  was 
another  matter.  The  moment  he  withdrew 
the  restraining  influence  of  his  personal  pre- 
sence, all  manner  of  contentions  came  into 
the  light  of  day. 

The  question  of  the  prudence  of  bearing 
arms  was  vigorously  debated.  James  Logan, 
secretary  of  the  province,  and  Penn's  ablest 
counselor,  urged  the  need  of  military  de- 
fenses. Conservative  Friends  opposed  it. 

Churchmen  had  been  settling  in  the  pro- 
vince. One  of  William's  oldest  friends, 


134  WILLIAM  PENN 

George  Keith,  who  had  accompanied  him 
on  his  religious  mission  to  Holland,  had  gone 
into  the  Episcopal  ministry.  Logan  says, 
in  a  letter  to  Penn,  that  "  not  suffering  them 
to  be  superior  "  was  accounted  by  the  church- 
men as  the  equivalent  of  persecution. 

Colonel  Quarry,  a  judge  of  the  admiralty, 
appointed  by  the  British  government  to  en- 
force the  navigation  laws  in  the  colony,  was 
responsible  to  the  Board  of  Trade  in  Lon- 
don, and  independent  of  the  governor  and 
of  the  assembly.  He  exercised  his  office  of 
critic  and  censor  to  the  annoyance  of  Penn. 

To  these  various  sources  of  trouble  was 
added  an  unending  strife  between  the  gov- 
ernor's deputy  and  the  people.  Penn's  habit 
of  looking  always  on  the  best  side  made  him 
a  bad  judge  of  men,  and  the  deputies  whom 
he  sent  were  few  of  them  competent ;  some 
were  not  even  respectable.  Penn,  with  his 
characteristic  invincible  blindness,  took  their 
part. 

Finally,  the  disputations,  protests,  and 
complaints,  with  direct  attacks  upon  Penn's 
interests,  and  even  upon  his  character,  got 


CLOSING  YEARS  135 

to  such  a  pass  that  he  addressed  a  letter  of 
expostulation  to  the  people.  "When  it 
pleased  God  to  open  a  way  for  me  to  settle 
that  colony,"  he  wrote,  "  I  had  reason  to  ex- 
pect a  solid  comfort  from  the  services  done 
to  many  hundreds  of  people.  .  .  .  But,  alas ! 
as  to  my  part,  instead  of  reaping  the  like 
advantages,  some  of  the  greatest  of  my  trou- 
bles have  sprung  from  thence.  The  many 
combats  I  have  engaged  in,  the  great  pains 
and  incredible  expense  for  your  welfare  and 
ease,  to  the  decay  of  my  former  estate  .  .  . 
with  the  undeserved  opposition  I  have  met 
with  from  thence,  sink  into  me  with  sorrow, 
that,  if  not  supported  by  a  superior  hand, 
might  have  overwhelmed  me  long  ago.  And 
I  cannot  but  think  it  hard  measure,  that, 
while  it  has  proved  a  land  of  freedom  and 
flourishing,  it  should  become  to  me,  by 
whose  means  it  was  principally  made  a 
country,  the  cause  of  grief,  trouble,  and 
poverty." 

So  heavy  was  the  financial  burden,  and  so 
vexatious  and  disheartening  the  bickering 
and  ingratitude,  that  Penn  thought  seriously 


136  WILLIAM  PENN 

of  selling  his  governorship;  and  it  was  in 
the  market  for  several  years  awaiting  a  pur- 
chaser. Indeed,  in  1712,  he  had  so  far  per- 
fected a  bargain  to  transfer  his  proprietary 
rights  to  the  crown  for  <£12,000,  that  no- 
thing remained  to  be  done  save  the  affixing 
of  his  signature.  Before  his  name  was  signed, 
he  fell  suddenly  ill,  and  the  transaction  went 
no  farther. 

In  the  midst  of  these  many  troubles,  in 
themselves  serious  enough,  there  came  an- 
other. Penn's  business  manager  for  his 
estates  in  England  and  Ireland  was  Philip 
Ford.  For  a  long  time,  Ford's  payments 
had  been  less  and  less ;  Penn  was  continu- 
ally complaining  that  he  got  so  little  from 
his  property.  Still,  Ford's  accounts  went 
without  examination,  and  some  of  his  finan- 
cial reports  were  not  so  much  as  opened. 
William  had  his  customary  confidence  in  his 
agent's  honesty.  At  last,  when  things  got 
so  bad  that  something  had  to  be  done,  it 
appeared  by  Ford's  books  that,  instead  of 
Ford's  being  in  debt  to  Penn,  Penn  was  in 
debt  to  him  for  more  than  ten  thousand 


CLOSING  YEARS  137 

pounds.  This  was  the  result  of  long,  inge- 
nious, and  unmolested  bookkeeping.  And 
Penn  had  made  himself  liable  by  his  care- 
less silence.  Then  Ford  died,  and  his  widow 
and  children  claimed  everything  which  stood 
in  Penn's  name.  Penn,  it  appeared,  had 
borrowed  money  of  Ford,  and  had  given 
him  a  mortgage  on  his  Pennsylvania  estates 
as  security.  When  the  loan  was  paid,  the 
mortgage  had  not  been  returned.  Not  only 
did  Mrs.  Ford  retain  it,  but  she  sued  Penn 
for  three  thousand  pounds  rent,  which  was 
due,  she  said,  from  the  property  of  which 
William  was  once  owner,  but  which  he  now 
held  as  tenant  of  the  Fords.  So  far  was 
this  iniquitous  business  pursued,  that  Penn 
was  arrested  as  he  was  at  a  religious  meet- 
ing in  Gracechurch  Street,  and  was  impris- 
oned for  debt  in  the  Fleet,  or  its  precincts. 

This  was  the  turn  in  the  tide.  Every- 
body disapproved  of  treatment  so  unjust 
and  extortionate.  William's  friends  raised 
money,  and  made  a  compromise  with  the 
Fords,  and  got  him  free.  In  Pennsylvania, 
too,  the  contentions  were  quieted  by  a  good 


138  WILLIAM  PENN 

governor.  And  as  the  wars  came  to  an  end, 
trade  so  increased  that  the  province  pre- 
sently yielded  a  substantial  income. 

Penn  retired  to  Buscombe,  in  Berkshire, 
in  the  pleasant  country.  Here  he  had  his 
family  about  him.  He  was  now  a  grand- 
father, his  son  William  having  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  "  So  that  now  we  are  major, 
minor,  and  minimus.  I  bless  the  Lord  mine 
are  pretty  well,  —  Johnny  lively ;  Tommy  a 
lovely,  large  child ;  and  my  grandson,  Sprin- 
gett,  a  mere  Saracen ;  his  sister,  a  beauty." 
Of  his  second  marriage  there  were  six  chil- 
dren, four  of  whom  —  John,  Thomas,  Mar- 
garet, and  Kichard  —  became  proprietors  of 
Pennsylvania.  Thomas  had  two  sons,  John 
and  Granville ;  Eichard  had  two,  John  and 
Richard.  When  the  proprietary  government 
ended,  in  1776,  it  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
heirs  of  William  Penn. 

In  1711,  Penn  wrote  a  preface  to  John 
Banks 's  Journal,  dictating  it,  as  his  custom 
was,  walking  to  and  fro  with  his  cane  in  his 
hand,  thumping  the  floor  to  mark  the  em- 
phasis. "  Now  reader,"  he  concludes,  "  be- 


CLOSING  YEARS  139 

fore  I  take  leave  of  thee,  let  me  advise  thee 
to  hold  thy  religion  in  the  spirit,  whether 
thou  prayest,  praisest  or  ministerest  to  oth- 
ers, .  .  .  which,  that  all  God's  people  may 
do,  is,  and  hath  long  been  the  earnest  desire 
and  fervent  supplication  of  theirs  and  thy 
faithful  friend  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
W.  PENN."  This  is  the  last  word  of  his 
writing  which  remains. 

The  next  year  he  had  a  paralytic  stroke, 
and  another,  and  another.  This  impaired  his 
memory  and  his  mind.  Thus  he  continued 
for  six  years,  as  happily  as  was  possible  un- 
der the  circumstances.  He  went  often  to 
meeting,  where  he  frequently  spoke,  briefly, 
but  with  "  sound  and  savory  expressions." 
He  walked  about  his  gardens,  saw  his  friends, 
and  delighted  in  the  company  of  his  wife 
and  children.  Each  year  left  him  weaker 
than  the  year  before;  but  his  days  were 
filled  with  serenity.  He  was  surrounded 
with  all  the  comforts  which  a  generous  in- 
come, an  affectionate  family,  the  respect  of 
his  neighbors,  and  the  approval  of  God, 
could  give  him. 


140  WILLIAM  PENN 

"He  that  lives  to  live  forever,"  he  had 
written  in  his  "  Fruits  of  Solitude,"  "  never 
fears  dying.  Nor  can  the  means  be  terrible 
to  him,  that  heartily  believes  the  end.  For 
though  death  be  a  dark  passage,  it  leads  to 
immortality ;  and  that  is  recompense  enough 
for  suffering  of  it.  ...  And  this  is  the  com- 
fort of  the  good,  that  the  grave  cannot  hold 
them,  and  that  they  live  as  soon  as  they 
die." 

Into  the  fullness  of  this  life  he  entered  on 
the  30th  of  July,  1718,  being  seventy-four 
years  old. 


The  chief  authorities  for  facts  concerning  William 
Penn  are  — 

1.  The  Select  Works  of  William  Penn  (London,  1726; 

3d  edition,  1782  ;  5  vols).  Whereof,  The  Trial  of 
William  Penn  and  William  Mead  (vol.  i.),  Travels 
in  Holland  and  Germany  (vol.  iii.),  and  A  General 
Description  of  Pennsylvania  (vol.  iv.)  contain  auto- 
biographical matter.  Some  Fruits  of  Solitude  and 
Penn's  Advice  to  his  Children  (vol.  v.)  are  simi- 
larly valuable. 

2.  The  Life  of  Penn  prefixed  to  his  Works,  by  Joseph 

Besse,  a  Quaker  contemporary  (1726). 

3.  Memoirs  of  the  Private  and  Public  Life  of  William 

Penn,  by  Thomas  Clarkson  (London,  1813). 

4.  The  Pennsylvania  Historical  Society  Memoirs  (vols. 

i.,  ii.,  iii.).  Also  the  Correspondence  between  Wil- 
liam Penn  and  James  Logan,  edited  for  this  So- 
ciety, by  Edward  Armstrong. 

5.  The  Penns  and  the  Penningtons,  by  Maria  Webb 

(London,  1867),  containing  family  letters. 

6.  Recent  biographies  of  Penn :  by  William  Hepworth 

Dixon  (1851),  by  Samuel  M.  Janney  (1852),  by 
John  Stoughton  (1882),  by  Sydney  George  Fisher 
(1900). 


®bt  fctoetfi&e 

Electrotype*  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 
Cambridfe,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


19Nov54FC 


REFOLD     FE816 


EEC1 


REC'D  LD 

NOV9    '64-lO 


m 


)  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


227632 

' 


